Goethe could never learn either whence it had come, or whither it went.

He always suspected that the autograph original had been sent to the Empress Catherine at St.
Petersburg, and that Schiller's manuscript was a copy from that.

Though Goethe had executed his translation, as he says, "not merely with readiness but even with passion," the violent and only too just hatred then prevailing in Germany for France and for all that belonged to France, hindered any vogue which _Rameau's Nephew_ might otherwise have had.

On the eve of Austerlitz and of Jena there might well be little humour for a satire from the French.
Thirteen years afterwards an edition of Diderot's works appeared in Paris (Belin's edition of 1818), but the editors were obliged to content themselves, for _Rameau's Nephew_, with an analysis of Goethe's translation.

In 1821 a lively sensation was produced by the publication of what professed to be the original text of the missing dialogue.