Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 5.djvu/112

98 praised him, that, living in the place where he was, he had made the language of the country his own, and had endeavoured as much as possible to render himself a Frenchman of society and orator. But what does he gain by the denial of his mother-tongue, and his efforts of speaking a foreign language? He cannot make it right with anybody. In society they consider him vain; as if any one would or could converse with others without some feeling for self and self-complacency! Then, the refined connoisseurs of the world and of language assert that there is in him more of dissertation and dialogue than of conversation, properly so called. The former was generally recognised as the original and fundamental sin of the Germans, the latter as the cardinal virtue of the French. As a public orator he fares no better. If he prints a well-elaborated address to the king or the princes, the Jesuits, who are ill disposed to him as a Protestant, lay wait for him, and show that his terms of expression are "not French."

Instead of consoling ourselves with this, and bearing as green wood that which had been laid upon the dry, we were annoyed at such pedantic injustice. We despair, and, by this striking example, become the more convinced that it is a vain endeavour to try to satisfy the French by the matter itself, as they are too closely bound to the external conditions under which everything is to appear. We therefore embrace the opposite resolution of getting rid of the French language altogether, and of directing ourselves more than ever, with might and earnestness, to our own mother-tongue.

And for this we found opportunity and sympathy in actual life. Alsace had not been connected with France so long that an affectionate adherence to the old constitution, manners, language, and costume did not still exist with old and young. If the conquered