study in Paris I owe to this capacity! We obtained it by the help of
bonnes, who found it easier to speak French to us because our mother
always did the same in their presence.

My mother considered it of the first importance to make us familiar with
French at a very early age, because, when she reached Berlin with a
scanty knowledge of German, her mastery of French secured numerous
pleasant things. She often told us how highly French was valued in the
capital, and we must believe that the language possesses an imperishable
charm for Germans when we remember that this was the case so shortly
after the glorious uprising against the terrible despotism of France.
True, French, in addition to its melody and ambiguity, possesses more
subtle turns and apt phrases than most other languages; and even the most
German of Germans, our Bismarck, must recognize the fitness of its
phrases, because he likes to avail himself of them. He has a perfect
knowledge of French, and I have noticed that, whenever he mingles it with
German, the former has some sentence which enables him to communicate in
better and briefer language whatever he may desire to express. What
German form of speech, for instance, can convey the idea of fulness which
will permit no addition so well as the French popular saying, "Full as an
egg," which pleased me in its native land, and which first greeted me in
Germany as an expression used by the great chancellor?

My mother's solicitude concerning good manners and perfection in speaking
French, which so easily renders children mere dolls, fortunately could
not deprive us of our natural freshness and freedom from constraint.
But if any peril to the character does lurk in being unduly mindful of
external forms, we three brothers were destined to spend a large portion
of our boyhood amid surroundings which, as it were, led us back to
Nature. Besides, even in Berlin we were not forbidden to play like