have rich
possessions.

_Sandt_.--None; not the highest.

_Kotzebue_.--Perhaps you may think them insecure; but they are not lost
yet, although the rapacity of France does indeed threaten to swallow
them up. But her fraudulence is more to be apprehended than her force.
The promise of liberty is more formidable than the threat of servitude.
The wise know that she never will bring us freedom; the brave know that
she never can bring us thraldom. She herself is alike impatient of both;
in the dazzle of arms she mistakes the one for the other, and is never
more agitated than in the midst of peace.

_Sandt_.--The fools that went to war against her, did the only thing
that could unite her; and every sword they drew was a conductor of that
lightening which fell upon their heads. But we must now look at our
homes. Where there is no strict union, there is no perfect love; and
where no perfect love, there is no true helper. Are you satisfied, sir,
at the celebrity and the distinctions you have obtained?

_Kotzebue_.--My celebrity and distinctions, if I must speak of them,
quite satisfy me. Neither in youth nor in advancing age--neither in
difficult nor in easy circumstances, have I ventured to proclaim myself
the tutor or the guardian of mankind.

_Sandt_.--I understand the reproof, and receive it humbly and
gratefully. You did well in writing the dramas, and the novels, and the
travels; but, pardon my question, who called you to the courts of
princes in strange countries?

_Kotzebue_.--They themselves.

_Sandt_.--They have no more right to take you away from your country,
than to eradicate a forest, or to subvert a church in it. You belong to
the land that bore you, and were not at liberty--(if right and liberty
are one, and unless they are, they are good for nothing)--you were not
at liberty, I repeat it, to enter into the service of an alien.

_Kotzebue_.--No magistrate, higher or lower, forbade me. Fine notions of
freedom are these!

_Sandt_.--A man is always a minor in regard to his fatherland; and the
servants of his fatherland are wrong and criminal, if they whisper in
his ear that he may go away, that he may work in another country, that
he may ask to be fed in it, and that he may wait there until orders and
tasks are given for his hands to execute. Being a German, you
voluntarily placed yourself in a position where you might eventually be
coerced to act against Germans.

_Kotzebue_.--I would not.

_Sandt_.