They could
always fall back on the language. So he took a room in the
household of the usual small government clerk with the usual
plain daughters, and continued the study of the language.
Possibly one might learn something more by accident, as one had
learned something of Beethoven. For the next eighteen months the
young man pursued accidental education, since he could pursue no
other; and by great good fortune, Europe and America were too
busy with their own affairs to give much attention to his.
Accidental education had every chance in its favor, especially
because nothing came amiss.
Perhaps the chief obstacle to the youth's education, now that
he had come of age, was his honesty; his simple-minded faith in
his intentions. Even after Berlin had become a nightmare, he
still persuaded himself that his German education was a success.
He loved, or thought he loved the people, but the Germany he
loved was the eighteenth-century which the Germans were ashamed
of, and were destroying as fast as they could. Of the Germany to
come, he knew nothing. Military Germany was his abhorrence. What
he liked was the simple character; the good-natured sentiment;
the musical and metaphysical abstraction; the blundering
incapacity of the German for practical affairs. At that time
everyone looked on Germany as incapable of competing with France,
England or America in any sort of organized energy.
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