"But it is not the same thing,--sympathetic and simpatica; indeed it is an untranslatable word. I cannot always express my thoughts in English."
"Would you allow me to suggest that it may not be entirely the fault of the language, which did not fail to express the thoughts of Chaucer and Shakspeare, that you find it difficult to make yourself understood?"
"Do I speak it so badly then? You are not complimentary."
"It is not that you speak it badly, but that your vocabulary is limited, and that your mind far outruns its limits. I fancy you have never read or thought much in a serious vein in the simplest and the strongest of tongues."
"No, I have read very little English, but I challenge your last statement. I do not find English the greatest language. It is coarse by the side of French; it is prosaic compared to Italian. Think of the fine distinctions, the delicate shades of meaning, of the Gallic tongue. Your English can only express the extremes."
"And yet to-day it is more a lender than a borrower of words. You cannot take up a German or a French newspaper without finding an Anglicism in every column."
"What does that prove? Merely that the Anglo-Saxon race is more restless than all others. They are the Goths of the nineteenth century, and invade every corner of Europe, Asia, and Africa, carrying with them their barbarous language. I have heard it intermingled with Arabic in the Syrian desert. It is small wonder they feel the need of travel; there is little enough to interest them at home."
"And yet I, who have lived half my life in Europe, elect to pass the remainder of it in this country of my own free choice. How do you account for that?"
"I cannot account for it save as an aberration of the brain. It is strange, too, for you Americans are not a patriotic people."
"You think not?"