When he reaches France, however, he begins to realize Germany's greatness. "In a foreign environment his judgment was freed"; this statement applies to him as to all of us. Amid the disorder of France he learned to value the active orderliness of Germany; the skeptical resignation of the French made him esteem the vigorous optimism of the Germans; he was impressed by the contrast between a witty nation and a thoughtful one. Yet he was under no illusions about the optimism of the new Germany, perceiving that it is often spurious. He became aware that the idealism often took the form of idealizing a dictatorial will. Even in the great masters, he saw, to quote Goethe's wonderful phrase, "how readily in the Germans the ideal waxes sentimental." His passionate sincerity, grown pitiless in the atmosphere of French clarity, revolts against this hazy idealism, which compromises between truth and desire, which justifies abuses of power with the plea of civilization, and which considers that might is sufficient warrant for victory. In France he becomes aware of the faults of France, in Germany he realizes the faults of Germany, loving both countries because they are so different. Each suffers from the defective distribution of its merits. In France, liberty is too widely diffused and engenders chaos, while a few individuals comprising the elite keep their idealism intact. In Germany, idealism, permeating the masses, has been sugared into sentimentalism and watered into a mercantile optimism; and here a still smaller elite preserves complete freedom aloof from the crowd. Each suffers from an excessive development of national peculiarities. Nationalism, as Nietzsche says, "has in France corrupted character, and in Germany has corrupted spirit and taste." Could but the two peoples draw together and impress their best qualities upon one another, they would rejoice to find, as Christophe himself had found, that "the richer he was in German dreams, the more precious to him became the clarity of the Latin mind." Olivier and Christophe, forming a pact of friendship, hope for the day when their personal sentiments will be perpetuated in an alliance between their respective peoples. In a sad hour of international dissension, the Frenchman calls to the German in words still unfulfilled: "We hold out our hands to you. Despite lies and hatred, we cannot be kept apart. We have mutual need of one another, for the greatness of our spirit and of our race. We are the two pinions of the west. Should one be broken, the other is useless for flight. Even if war should come, this will not unclasp our hands, nor will it prevent us from soaring upwards together." CHAPTER XV THE PICTURE OF ITALY