Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 5.djvu/114

100 cise and even the Prussian stick was introduced into the French army. As for the rest, we forgave him his predilection for a foreign language; since we felt satisfaction that his French poets, philosophers, and littérateurs continued to annoy him, and often declared that he was to be considered and treated only as an intruder.

But what, more than all, forcibly alienated us from the French, was the unpolite opinion, repeatedly maintained, that the Germans in general, as well as the king, who was striving after French cultivation, were deficient in taste. With regard to this kind of talk, which followed every judgment like a burden, we endeavoured to solace ourselves with contempt: but we could so much the less come to a clear understanding about it, as we were assured that Menage had already said, that the French writers possessed everything but taste; and had also learned, from the then living Paris, that all the authors were wanting in taste, and that Voltaire himself could not escape this severest of reproaches. Having been before and often directed to nature, we would allow of nothing but truth and uprightness of feeling, and the quick, blunt expression of it.

"Friendship, love, and brotherhood, Are they not self-understood?"

was the watchword and cry of battle, by which the members of our little academical horde used to know and enliven each other. This maxim lay at the foundation of all our social banquets, on the occasions of which we did not fail to pay many an evening visit to Cousin Michel, in his well-known "Germanhood."

If, in what has hitherto been described, only external