Dragons’s teeth

I

THE autumn storms begin early on the North Sea, and judging from his text the poet Heine had stayed to witness them. The storm rages and whips the waves, and the waves, foaming with fury and leaping, tower up, and the white water mountains surge with life, and the little ship mounts upon them, hasty-diligent, and suddenly plunges down into black wide-gaping abysses of flood. О sea! Mother of beauty, arise from the foam! Grandmothers of love, spare mine!

But when you are running a floating dairy farm you cannot take chances of your stock’s becoming seasick; you must put them on dry land before the equinoctial season and learn about storms from the pages of a book. Hansi and Bess had a concert tour, Freddi was going to apply the economic knowledge he had gained, and Lanny wanted to examine some pictures which might come on the market. Lanny, his wife, his mother, and her husband were urged to confer distinction and charm upon an oversized Berlin palace. "What else did I buy it for?" argued the proprietor.

To Lanny the young wife said privately: "Do you think it is a good thing for us to be associating with Jews all the time?"

The husband smiled. "You can meet anybody you want in that house. I assure you they will come."

"Maybe so; but won’t they think there must be something wrong with us?"

"I assure you, my dear, they all know exactly what you are worth."

"Lanny, that’s a horrid view to take of people!"

"You can save yourself a lot of unhappiness by taking my word about Europe. I have lived here most of my life." Lanny might have added: "Remember Ettore!" But he rarely permitted himself to mention the dashing Italian duca with whom she had once fancied herself in love.

"But, Lanny, we have been living off the Robins for nearly five months! Am I never going to spend any of my own money?"

"If your conscience worries you, give Freddi a good check for his new school. Nothing will please Johannes more."

"But if he wants that done, why doesn’t he do it himself?"

"I think he may be afraid to; it would make too many enemies. But if you do it, he will have an alibi."

"Is he really that much of a coward, Lanny?"

The young husband chuckled. "Again I tell you, take my word about Europe!"

II

The German-Jewish money-lord had several of his guest-suites opened up, dusted, aired, and supplied with fresh flowers. He would have had them redecorated if there had been time. The one assigned to Irma and Lanny had a drawing-room with a piano in it; also a bedroom, dressing-room, and bath for each. Each dressing-room had a clothes closet which was almost a room and would hold all the imitations of Paris costumes which the couturiers of Berlin might persuade Irma to purchase. She didn’t have gold bathroom fixtures and Lanny didn’t have silver—one had to go to America for styles such as that; but they had drawings by Boucher and Fragonard, Watteau and Lancret on their walls, and Lanny knew these were genuine, for he and Zoltan had purchased them and divided a ten per cent commission. Irma found that rather embarrassing, but Lanny said: "It was what enabled me to dress properly while I was courting you!"

Next door to their suite was one for the baby and the dependable Miss Severne. Feathers had been telegraphed for, and was on hand to take charge of Irma’s affairs: writing her letters, paying her bills, keeping track of her appointments. Johannes had provided an English-speaking maid, ready to serve her from the moment of her arrival; indeed, he would have ordered a baby giraffe from the Hagenbeck zoo if he had thought that would have added to her happiness.

Feathers had only to telephone to the steward’s office downstairs and a car would be at the door in a minute or two. There were theaters, operas, concerts, and cabaret entertainments for every sort of taste, high or low. The palace was in the fashionable district, convenient to everything, so the two young mothers had no trouble in keeping their schedules; lying back in the cushions of a limousine, they had time to recover from any excitement and thus avoid displeasing the head nurse. Their babies, being so well cared for, rarely cried at night, and, anyhow, that was the night nurse’s affair. In the early morning hours this nurse would steal into Irma’s bedroom, bringing Baby Frances for her first meal, and Irma would suckle her while still half asleep. Oh, yes, modern science can make life pleasant for those fortunate ones who have the price! Fond dreamers talk about making it that way for everybody, but the daughter of a utilities magnate would repeat an ancient question: "Who will do the dirty work?" She never found out who would, but she knew quite certainly who wouldn’t.

Each member of the visiting party had his or her own idea of happiness. Miss Severne inquired concerning the English church in Berlin, and there she met persons near enough to her social station so that she could be happy in their company. Mr. Dingle discovered a New Thought group with a lecturer from America, and thus was able to supply himself with the magazines he had been missing. It is a fortunate circumstance about Christian Science and New Thought publications, that dealing with eternal truths they never get out of date. The only trouble is that, saying the same things, they are apt to become monotonous. Undeterred by this, Mr. Dingle began escorting Madame to a spiritualist church; they knew only a few words of the German language, but the spirits were international, and there were always living persons willing to help two foreigners.

III

The great city of Berlin, capital of the shattered Prussian dream. Triumphal arches, huge marble statues of Hohenzollern heroes, palaces of old-time princes and new-time money-lords; sumptuous hotels, banks that were temples of Mammon, department stores filled with every sort of luxury goods—and wandering about the streets, hiding in stone caves and cellars, or camping out in tents in vacant spaces, uncounted hordes of hungry, ill-clothed, fear-driven, and hate-crazed human beings. Out of a population of four million it might be doubted if there were half a million really contented. There was no street where you could escape the sight of pinched and haggard faces; none without beggars, in spite of the law; none where a well-dressed man could avoid the importunities of women and half-grown children, male or female, seeking to sell their bodies for the price of a meal.

Shut your eyes to these sights and your mind to these thoughts. The city was proud and splendid, lighted at night like the Great White Way in New York. The shop windows were filled with displays of elegance, and there were swarms of people gazing, and some buying. Tell yourself that the stories of distress were exaggerated; that the flesh of boys and girls had been for sale in Nineveh and Baghdad, and was now for sale in London and New York, though perhaps they used a bit more Anglo-Saxon hypocrisy. Prostitution has been the curse of great cities ever since they began; swarms of people come piling into them, lured by the hope of easy wealth, or driven from the land by economic forces which men have never learned to control.

This was something about which Freddi Robin should have been able to speak, he being now a duly certified Herr Doktpr in the science of economics. He reported that the great university had left it still a mystery to students. The proper academic procedure was to accumulate masses of facts, but to consider explanations only historically. You learned that the three-stage pattern of primitive economic progress as taught by Friedrich List had been abandoned after the criticisms of anthropologists, and that Roscher’s theory of national economics as a historical category had been replaced by the new historical school of Schmoller. It was all right for you to know that in ancient Rome the great estates, the latifundia, had been worked with slave labor, thus driving independent farmers to the city and herding them into ramshackle five-story tenements which often burned down. But if in the class you pointed out that similar tendencies were apparent in Berlin, you would be looked at askance by a professor whose future depended upon his avoidance of political controversy.

To be sure, they were supposed to enjoy academic freedom in Germany, and you might listen to a Catholic professor in one lecture hall and to a Socialist in the next; but when it came to promotions, somebody had to decide, and you could hardly expect the authorities to give preference to men whose teachings fostered that proletarian discontent which was threatening to rend the country apart. At any rate, that is the way Freddi Robin reported the situation in the great University of Berlin.

IV

The Budds arrived a week or so before the national elections in September 1930. The city was in an uproar, with posters and placards everywhere, hundreds of meetings each night, parades with bands and banners, crowds shouting and often fighting. The tension was beyond anything that Lanny had ever witnessed; under the pressure of the economic collapse events in Germany were coming to a crisis, and everybody was being compelled to take sides.

The young people wanted to see these sights. Hansi and Bess must attend a big Communist gathering the very night of their arrival, and the others went along out of curiosity. The great hall in the Moabit district was draped with red streamers and banners having the hammer and sickle in black. Also there were red carnations or rosettes in people’s buttonholes. The crowd was almost entirely proletarian: pitiful pinched faces of women, haggard grim faces of men; clothing dingy, generally clean but so patched that the original cloth was a matter of uncertainty, many a man had had no new suit since the war.

The speakers raved and shouted, and worked the crowd into a frenzy; the singing made you think of an army marching into battle. A quartet sang chants with hammering rhythms, the repetition of simple words, like lessons repeated by children in school. Lanny translated for his wife: "Be ready to take over! Be ready to take over!"

Irma had learned a lot about this subject during her sojourn in these two strange families; she had listened to Uncle Jesse, and to Hansi and Bess arguing with Lanny, and now and then with Hansi’s father. They didn’t want to kill anybody—not unless somebody resisted. All they wanted was to reproduce in Germany what they had done in Russia; to confiscate the property of the rich and reduce them to their own slum level. Johannes had smiled and said they would make a museum out of his palace, and that would be all right with him, he would buy another in London, and then one in New York, and then one in Tahiti—by which time Russia would have restored capitalism, and he would return to that region and make his fortune all over again.

The financier made a joke of it, but it was no joke at this Versammlung. Not one single laugh in a whole evening; the nearest to it was mocking jeers, hardly to be distinguished from cries of rage. This was what they called the "proletariat," the creatures of the slums, threatening to burst out, overcome the police, and raid the homes of those whom they called "exploiters." The speakers were seeking election to the Reichstag, where they would pour out the same kind of tirades. Irma looked about her uneasily, and was glad she had had the sense not to wear any of her jewels to this place. It wasn’t safe anyhow, for the National Socialists often raided the crowds coming out from Red meetings, and there were rights and sometimes shootings.

V

The Social-Democrats also were holding great meetings. They were by far the largest party in the Republic, but had never had an outright majority, either of votes or of representation; therefore they had not been able to have their way. If they had, would they have known what to do? Would they have dared trying to bring Socialism to the Fatherland? Hansi and Bess declared that they were paralyzed by their notions of legality; it was a party of officeholders, of bureaucrats warming swivel-chairs and thinking how to keep their jobs and salaries. They continued to call themselves Socialist and to repeat the party shibboleths, but that was simply bait for the voters. How to get Socialism they had no idea, and they didn’t consider it necessary to find out.

Lanny, yearning after the orderly methods of democracy, considered that it was up to him to help this party. In days past he had brought letters of introduction from Longuet, and now he went to renew old acquaintanceships, and to prove his sincerity by making a contribution to the party’s campaign chest. He took his family to one of the mass meetings, and certainly, if there was any tiredness or deadness, it didn’t show on this public occasion. The hall was packed to the doors, banners and streamers were everywhere, and when the party’s favorite orators made their appearance volumes of cheering rolled to the roof and back. These men didn’t rave and threaten as the Communists did; they discussed the practical problems confronting the German workers, and denounced both groups of extremists for leading the people astray with false promises. It was a dignified meeting, and Irma felt more comfortable; there didn’t seem to be anything to start a fight about.

On their way home the young people discussed what they had heard. Bess, who used the same phonograph records as Uncle Jesse, said that the party was old—a grandfather party—so it had the machinery for getting out the crowds. "But," she added, "those municipal councilors repeating their formulas make one think of stout, well-fed parrots dressed up in frock-coats."

"The Communists don’t have any formulas, of course!" countered Lanny, not without a touch of malice. These two loved each other, but couldn’t discuss politics without fighting.

Bess was referring to officials who had reported on their efforts to increase the city’s milk supply and reduce its price. Lanny had found the Socialists discussing the same subject in New York; it was no unimportant matter to the women of the poor. "Of course it’s dull and prosy," he admitted; "not so exciting as calling for the revolution next week—"

"I know," broke in the sister; "but while you’re discussing milk prices, the Nazis are getting arms caches and making their plans to bring about the counter-revolution next week."

"And the reactionary princes conspiring with them, and the great capitalists putting up money to pay for the arms!" Thus Hansi, stepping onto dangerous ground, since his father was one of those capitalists. How much longer was that secret going to be kept in the Robin family?

VI

Lanny wanted to hear all sides; he wanted to know what the Nazis were doing and saying, if only so as to send Rick an account of it. Among his acquaintances in Berlin was Heinrich Jung, blue-eyed "Aryan" enthusiast from Upper Silesia. Heinrich had spent three years training himself to succeed his father as head forester of Graf Stubendorf’s domain; but now all that had been set aside, and Heinrich was an official of the National Socialist German Workingmen’s Party, high up in what they called the Hitler Youth. For seven or eight years he had been mailing propaganda to Lanny Budd in Bienvenu, having never given up hope that a pure-blooded "Aryan" would feel the pull of his racial ties.

Lanny called him on the telephone, and Heinrich was delighted and begged him to come to party headquarters. The visitor didn’t consider it necessary to mention the fact that he was staying in the home of one of the most notorious of Jewish Schieber. It wouldn’t really have mattered, for such eccentricities in an American didn’t mean what they would have meant in a German. A German traveler had described America as "the land of unlimited possibilities," and rich, successful persons from that fabulous region walked the common earth of Europe as demigods. Even the Führer himself was in awe of them, having heard the report that they had not run away from the mighty German army. A bright feather in the cap of a young party official if he should bring in such a convert to the new religion of blood and soil.

The blue-eyed and fair-haired young Prussian had matured greatly in the three or four years since Lanny had seen him. He had his private office in the great Nazi building, and was surrounded by the appurtenances of power: files and charts, a telephone on his desk, and a buzzer to summon his subordinates. He wore the uniform of the Sturmabteilung, those party soldiers whose marching and drum-beating were by now among the familiar sights in German cities: brown shirt and trousers with black stripes, shiny black boots, red armband with the swastika in black. Handsome, smart, snappy—and keep out of their way, for they mean business. Die Straße frei Den braunen Bataillonen!

Heinrich stopped only long enough to ask after Lanny’s wife and baby, about whom he had heard from Kurt. Then he began pouring out the story of the miracles which had been achieved by the N.S.D.A.P.—the initials of the party’s German name—since those old days when a student of forestry had revealed it as a tiny shoot just pushing its head through the wintry soil. "Tall oaks from little acorns grow!" said Heinrich; having written it as an English copybook exercise in school.

A ladder was provided and Lanny was taken up to the topmost branches of that ever-spreading oak tree. The Hitler Youth constituted the branches where the abundant new growth was burgeoning; for this part of the tree all the rest existed. The future Germany must be taught to march and to fight, to sing songs of glory, hymns to the new Fatherland it was going to build. It must be well fed and trained, sound of wind and limb; it must know the Nazi creed, and swear its oath of loyalty to what was called the Führerprinzip, the faith that the individual exists for the state, and that the state is guided by one inspired leader. No matter from what sort of homes the young people came, the Nazis would make them all the same: perfect party members, obedient because it is a joy to obey, because the future belongs to those who are strong, confident, and united.

Lanny had seen this principle working in the soul of one sturdy young "Aryan," and now he discovered him as a machine engaged in turning out thousands of other specimens exactly like himself. A machine for making machines! On the wall was a map showing where the branch offices of this youth-machine were situated — and they weren’t only in Germany, but in every city on earth where Germans lived. There were charts and diagrams, for in this land things are done scientifically, including Hitler propaganda. "Deutscbland Erwache!" said a placard on Heinrich’s wall. The Führer was a great deviser of slogans; he would retire to a secret place and there ponder and weigh many hundreds which came to his mind, and when he chose one, it would appear on posters and be shouted at meetings in every hamlet of the land. "Germany, Awake!"

VII

Lanny was touched by the pride with which the young official revealed and explained the complex organization he had helped to build; its various departments and subdivisions, each having an official endowed with one of those elaborate titles which Germans so dearly love. The head of the great machine was, of course, the one and only Adolf, Partei- und oberster S.A. Führer, Vorsitzender der N.S.D.A.P. Under him were adjutants and Secretariat and Chief of Staff, the Reichsjugendführer (who was Heinrich’s superior) and his Staff Director, the Subdirectors of half a dozen different staffs, the Business Manager, the Secretary, the Presidium, the Reich Directorate.

Also there was a Political Organization, or rather two, P.O. 1 and P.O. 2—they had two of everything, except of the Führer. It made you dizzy merely to hear about all these obligations and responsibilities: the Foreign Division, Economic Policy Division, Race and Culture Division, Internal Political Division, Legal Division, Engineering-Technical Division, Labor Service Division; the Reich Propaganda Leaders Number 1 and Number 2, the Leaders of the Reich Inspection 1 and 2; the Investigation and Adjustment Committee—what a whopper of a title had been assigned to them: Untersuchungs und Schlichtungsausschuss, or USCHLA! But don’t smile over it, for Heinrich Jung explains that the party is preparing to take over the destinies of the Fatherland, to say nothing of many decadent nations of Europe and elsewhere, and all this machinery and even more will be needed; the Gymnastics and Sports Committee, the Bureau Leader for the Press, the Zentralparteiverlag, the Persomlamt, and much more. Heinrich was responsible for the affairs of one department of the Hitler Youth, with twenty-one geographic sections throughout Germany. They maintained a school for future Nazi leaders, and published three monthlies and a semi-monthly. There were divisions dealing with press, culture, propaganda, defense-sport—they were learning not merely to fight the Young Communists, but to make a sport of it! Also there were the junior organizations, the Deutsches Jungvolk and the Bund Deutscher Mädel, and a Studentenbund, and a Women’s League, and so on apparently without end. The polite Lanny Budd was glad in his heart that it was election time and that so many subordinates were waiting to receive orders from this overzealous expounder.

VIII

One thing a young party official would not fail to do for an old friend: to take him to the mighty Versammlung in the Sport-palast which was to climax the Nazi campaign. Here the Führer himself would make his final appeal to the German voters; and it would be like nothing ever seen in the world before. For several months this marvelous man had been rushing" all over the land making speeches, many hundreds of them; traveling by airplane, or in his fast Mercedes car, wearing the tan raincoat in which Lanny had seen him in the old days; possibly not the same coat, but the same simple, devoted, inspired, and inspiring leader whose mission it was to revive Germany and then the whole world. Heute gehört uns Deutschland und morgen die ganze Welt!

Heinrich explained that seats would be difficult to obtain; there would be a line of people waiting at the doors of the Sportpalast from early morning to be sure of getting good places. There would of course be reserved seats for important persons, and Lanny accepted four tickets. He knew that none of the Robins would attend a Nazi meeting—it really wouldn’t be safe, for someone might spit in their faces, or beat them if they failed to give the Nazi salute and shout "Heil Hitler.¹" Bess loathed the movement and its creed, and her curiosity had been fully satisfied by watching the Stormtroopers on the march and by occasional glances at their newspapers.

Well in advance of eight o’clock Lanny and his wife and Beauty and her husband were in their seats. Bands playing, literature-sellers busy, and armed squads keeping watch all over the enormous arena —Communists keep out! A display of banners and streamers with all the familiar slogans: "Down with Versailles!" "Freedom and Bread!" "Germany, Awake!" "An End to Reparations!" "Common Wealth before Private Wealth!" "Break the Bonds of Interest Slavery!" These last were the "radical" slogans, carried down from the old days; Robbie had said they were practically the same as those of the "money cranks" in the United States, the old-time Populists and Greenbackers; they appealed to the debtor classes, the small farmers, the little business men who felt themselves being squeezed by the big trusts. This Hitler movement was a revolt of the lower middle classes, whose savings had been wiped out by the inflation and who saw themselves being reduced to the status of proletarians.

To Irma they seemed much nicer-looking people than those she had seen at the other two meetings. The blасk-and-silver uniforms of the Schutzstaffel, who acted as ushers and guards, were new and quite elegant; these young men showed alertness and efficiency. Twenty or thirty thousand people singing with fervor were impressive, and Irma didn’t know that the songs were full of hatred for Frenchmen and Poles. She knew that the Nazis hated the Jews, and this she deplored. She had learned to be very fond of one Jewish family, but she feared there must be something wrong with the others—so many people said it. In any case, the Germans had to decide about their own country.

Singing and speech-making went on for an hour or so; then came a roll of drums and a blast of trumpets in the main entrance, and all the men and women in the huge place leaped to their feet. Der Führer kommt! A regiment of Stormtroopers in solemn march, carrying flags with spearpoints or bayonets at the tips of the poles. The bands playing the magnificent open chords to which the gods march across the rainbow bridge into Valhalla at the close of Das Rheingold. Then the party leaders, military and magnificent, marching in the form of a hollow square, protecting their one and only leader. Someone with a sense of drama has planned all this; someone who has learned from Wagner how to combine music, scenery, and action so as to symbolize the fundamental aspirations of the human soul, to make real to the common man his own inmost longing.

Who was that genius? Everyone in the hall, with the possible exception of a few Lanny Budds, believed that it was the little man who marched in the center of that guard of honor; the simple man with the old tan raincoat, the one whom honors could not spoil, the one consecrated to the service of the Fatherland; one born of the common people, son of an obscure Austrian customs official; a corporal of the World War wounded and gassed; an obscure workingman, a dreamer of a mighty dream, of Germany freed and restored to her place among the nations, or perhaps above them.

He wore no hat, and his dark hair, long and brushed to one side, fell now and then across his pale forehead and had to be swept away. No fashion here, a plain man, just like you and me; one whose hand you can shake, who smiles in a friendly way at those who greet him. A storm of cheering arises, the Heils become like raindrops falling in a cloudburst—so many that you cannot hear the individual ones, the sounds become a union like the National Socialist German Workingmen’s Party.

Lanny has never attended an old-fashioned American revival meeting, but his friend Jerry Pendleton from Kansas has told him about one, and here is another. Has someone from the American South or Middle West come over and taught these arts of stirring the souls of primitive people, of letting them take part in what is being done to them? Or is it something that rises out of the primitive soul in every part of the world? The speakers on this platform ask questions, and twenty thousand throats shout the answers. Only they do not shout: "Glory Hallelujah!" and "Bless the Lord!"; theirs are secular cries: "Down with Versailles!" "Juda verrecke!" and "Deutschland erwache!"

IX

Seven years since Lanny watched Charlie Chaplin come out upon the stage of a great beerhall in Munich; and here he is again, the same foolish little dark mustache, the same shy manner, humble, deprecating. But now he is stouter, he gets better food. Now, also, there are a score of spotlights centered upon him, telling everybody that appearances are deceptive, and that this is a special One. Banners and symbols, slogans and rituals, hopes and resolves, all have come out of his soul; he is the Messiah, the One appointed and sent to save the Fatherland in its hour of greatest trial.

He begins to speak, and Lanny knows every tone. Quiet at first, and the vast hall as still as the universe must have been before God created it. But soon the man of visions begins to warm up to his theme. The slogans which he has taught to all Germany work upon himself as upon others; they dominate his entire being; they are sparks from a white-hot flame which burns day and night within him. The flame of "Adi’s" hatred of his miserable and thwarted life! Hatred of his father, the dumb petty bureaucrat who wanted to make his son like himself and wouldn’t let him become an artist; hatred of the critics and dealers who wouldn’t recognize his pitiful attempts at painting; hatred of the bums and wastrels in the flophouses who wouldn’t listen to his inspired ravings; hatred of the Russians and the French and the British and the Americans who wouldn’t let an obscure corporal win his war; hatred of Marxists who betrayed Germany by a stab in the back; hatred of the Jews who made money out of her misery; hatred of all who now stood in the way of her destiny, who opposed Adi’s party which was to save her from humiliation. All these hatreds had flamed forth from one thwarted soul and had set fire to the tinder-box which Germany had become—and here it was, blazing, blazing!

The Führer possessed no gleam of humor, no trace of charm. He was an uneducated man, and spoke with an Austrian country accent, not always grammatically. His voice was hoarse from a thousand speeches, but he forced it without mercy. He raved and shrieked; he waved his arms, he shook his clenched fists in the face of Germany’s enemies. Perspiration poured from his pasty and rather lumpy countenance; his heavy hair fell down over his eyes and had to be flung back.

Lanny knew every gesture, every word. Adi hadn’t learned a thing, hadn’t changed a thing in seven years; he had merely said the same things a million times. His two-part book which Lanny had read with mingled dismay and laughter had become the bible of a new religion. Millions of copies had been sold, and extracts from it and reiterations of it had been printed in who could guess how many pamphlets, leaflets, and newspapers? Certainly well up in the billions; for some of the Nazi newspapers had circulations of hundreds of thousands every day, and in the course of years that mounts up. Heinrich told Lanny that they had held nearly thirty-five thousand meetings in Germany during the present campaign and quantities of literature had been sold at every one of them. Lanny, listening and watching the frenzied throng, remembered some lines from his poetry anthology, lines which had sounded melodious and exciting, but which he hadn’t understood when he had read them as a boy:

One man with a dream, at pleasure, Shall go forth and conquer a crown;

And three with a new song’s measure Can trample an empire down.

X

There had been an election to the Reichstag less than two and a half years before, and at that election the Social-Democrats had polled more than nine million votes, the Communists more than three million, and the Nazis less than one million. The two last-named parties had been active since then, and everyone agreed that conditions favored the extremists. The business collapse in America had made farm products unsalable there, and this had caused an immediate reaction in Germany; the peasants had their year’s harvest to sell at a heavy loss. As for the workers, there were four million unemployed, and fear in the hearts of all the rest. These groups were sure to vote for a change—but of what sort?

Impossible to spend a week in a nation so wrought up and not come to share the excitement. It became a sort of sporting proposition; you chose sides and made bets to back yourself. After the fashion of humans, you believed what you hoped. Lanny became sure that the cautious, phlegmatic German people would prefer the carefully thought-out program of the Socialists and give them an actual majority so that they could put it into effect. But Johannes Robin, who thrived on pessimism, expected the worst—by which he meant that the Communists would come out on top. Red Berlin would become scarlet, or crimson, or whatever is the most glaring of shades.

The results astounded them all—save possibly Hejnrich Jung and his party comrades. The Social-Democrats lost more than half a million votes; the Communists gained more than a million and a quarter; while the Nazis increased their vote from eight hundred thousand to nearly six and a half million: a gain of seven hundred per cent in twenty-eight months! The score in millions stood roughly, Social-Democrats eight and a half, Nazis six and a half, and Communists four and a half.

The news hit the rest of the world like a high-explosive shell. The statesmen of the one-time Allied lands who were so certain that they had Germany bound in chains; the international bankers who had lent her five billion dollars; the negotiators who, early in this year of 1930, had secured her signature to the Young Plan, whereby she bound herself to pay reparations over a period of fifty-eight years—all these now suddenly discovered that they had driven six and a half million of their victims crazy! War gains were to be confiscated, trusts nationalized, department stores communalized, speculation in land prevented, and usurers and profiteers to suffer the death penalty! Such was the Nazi program for the inside of Germany; while for the outside, the Versailles treaty was to be denounced, the Young Plan abrogated, and Germany was to go to war, if need be, in order to set her free from the "Jewish-dominated plutocracies" of France, Britain, and America!

Lanny’s host was unpleasantly surprised by these returns, but, after thinking matters over, he decided not to worry too much. He said that no soup is ever eaten as hot as it is cooked. He said that the wild talk of the Nazis was perhaps the only way to get votes just now. He had his private sources of information, and knew that the responsible leaders were embarrassed by the recklessness of their young followers. If you studied the Nazi program carefully you would see that it was full of all sorts of "jokers" and escape clauses. The campaign orators of Berlin had been promising the rabble "confiscation without compensation" of the great estates of the Junkers; but meanwhile, in East Prussia, they had got the support of the Junkers by pointing to the wording of the program: the land to be confiscated must be "socially necessary." And how easy to decide that the land of your friends and supporters didn’t come within that category!

But all the same Johannes decided to move some more funds to Amsterdam and London, and to consult Robbie Budd about making more investments in America. Hundreds of other German capitalists took similar steps; and of course the Nazis found it out, and their press began to cry that these "traitor plutocrats" should be punished by the death penalty.

XI

The rich did not give up their pleasures on account of elections, nor yet of election results. The fashionable dressmakers, the milliners, the jewelers came clamoring for appointments with the famous Frau Lanny Budd, geborene Irma Barnes. They displayed their choicest wares, and skilled workers sat up all night and labored with flying fingers to meet her whims. When she was properly arrayed she sallied forth, and the contents of her trunks which Feathers had brought from Juan, were placed at the disposal of the elder Frau Budd, who dived into them with cries of delight, for they had barely been worn at all and had cost more than anything she had ever been able to afford in her life. A few alterations, to allow for embonpoint attributable to the too rich fare of the yacht, and a blond and blooming Beauty was ready to stand before kings — whether of steel, coal, or chemicals, potash, potatoes, or Renten-marks.

She did not feel humiliated to play second fiddle in the family, for after all she was a grandmother; also, she had not forgotten the lesson of the Wall Street collapse. Let Irma go on paying the family bills and nursing the family infant, and her mother-in-law would do everything in the power of a highly skilled social intriguer to promote her fortunes, put her in a good light, see that she met the right people and made the right impressions. Beauty would even write to Irma’s mother and urge her to come to Berlin and help in this task; there must never be any rivalry or jealousy between them; on the contrary, they must be partners in the duty of seeing that Irma got everything to which her elegance, charm, and social position—Beauty didn’t say wealth—entitled her.

Lanny, of course, had to play up to this role; he had asked for it, and now couldn’t back out. He had to let the tailors come and measure him for new clothes, and stand patiently while they made a perfect fit. No matter how bored he was, no matter how much he would have preferred trying some of Hindemith’s new compositions! His mother scolded him, and taught his wife to scold him; such is the sad fate of kind-hearted men. When he and Irma were invited to a dinner-party by the Prinz Ilsaburg zu Schwarzadler or to a ball at the palace of the Baron von Friedrichsbrunn, it would have been unthinkable to deprive Irma of such honors and a scandal to let some other man escort her.

It wasn’t exactly a scandal for Johannes Robin to escort the elder Frau Budd, for it was known that he had a wife who was ill-adapted to a fashionable career. Beauty, on the other hand, had taken such care of her charms that you couldn’t guess her years; she was a gorgeous pink rose, now fully unfolded. Fashionable society was mistaken in its assumptions concerning her host and her self, for both this strangely assorted pair were happy with their respective spouses, and both spouses preferred staying at home—Mama Robin to watch over the two infants whom she adored equally, and Parsifal Dingle to read his New Thought publications and say those prayers which he was firmly assured were influencing the souls of all the persons he knew, keeping them free from envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness. Parsifal himself had so little of these worldly defects that he didn’t even know that it was a humiliation to have his wife referred to as the elder Frau Budd.

The Jew who had been born in a hut with a mud floor in the realm of the Tsar was proud to escort the Budd ladies about die grosse Welt of Berlin. He told them so with a frankness touched with humor and untouched with servility. He said that when he was with them his blood was pure and his fortune untainted. He said that many a newly arrived Schieber was paying millions of marks for social introductions which he, the cunning one, was getting practically free. He could say such things, not merely because Bess and Hansi had made their families one, but because he knew that Robbie Budd needed Johannes in a business way as much as Johannes needed Robbie’s ladies in a social way. A fair deal, and all parties concerned understood it.

So the former Jascha Rabinowich of Lodz gave a grand reception and ball in honor of the two Damen Budd. Decorations were planned, a list of guests carefully studied, and the chefs labored for a week preparing fantastical foods; the reception-rooms of the marble palace which looked like a railway station came suddenly to resemble a movie director’s dream of Bali or Brazil. Anyhow, it was a colossal event, and Johannes said that the magnates who came wouldn’t be exclusively his own business associates, the statesmen wouldn’t be exclusively those who had got campaign funds from him, and the members of the aristocracy wouldn’t be exclusively those who owed him money. "Moreover," added the shrewd observer, "they will bring their wives and daughters."

XII

Lanny Budd, in his best bib and tucker, wandering about in this dazzling assemblage, helping to do the honors, helping to make people feel at home; dancing with any overgrown Prussian Backfisch who appeared to be suffering from neglect; steering the servitors of food toward any dowager whose stomach capacity hadn’t been entirely met. Dowagers with large pink bosoms, no shoulder-straps, and perfectly incredible naked backs; servitors in pink-and-green uniforms with gold buttons, white silk gloves and stockings, and pumps having rosettes. Lanny has dutifully studied the list of important personages, so that he will know whom he is greeting and commit no faux pas. He has helped to educate his wife, so that she can live up to the majesty of her fortune. Never think that a social career is for an idler!

"Do you know General Graf Stubendorf?" inquires one of the enormous elderly Valkyries.

"I have never had the honor," replies the American. "But I have visited Seine Hochgeboren’s home on many occasions."

"Indeed?" says Seine Hochgeboren. He is tall and stiff as a ramrod, with sharp, deeply lined features, gray hair not more than a quarter of an inch in length, a very bright new uniform with orders and decorations which he has earned during four years of never-to-be-forgotten war.

Lanny explains: "I have been for most of my life a friend of Kurt Meissner."

"Indeed?" replies the General Graf. "We consider him a great musician, and are proud of him at Stubendorf."

"I have spent many Christmases at the Meissner home," continues the young American. "I had the pleasure of listening to you address your people each year; also I heard your honored father, before the war."

"Indeed?" says Seine Hochgeboren, again. "I cannot live there any longer, but I go back two or three times a year, out of loyalty to my people." The gray-haired warrior is conveying to a former foe: "I cannot bear to live in my ancestral home because it has become a part of Poland, and is governed by persons whom I consider almost subhuman. You and your armies did it, by meddling without warrant in the affairs of Germany and snatching her hard-won victory from her grasp. Then you went off and left us to be plundered by the rapacious French and the shopkeeping British."

It is not a subject to be explored, so Lanny says some polite words of no special significance and passes on, reflecting: "If Johannes thinks he is winning that gentleman, he is surely fooling himself!"

XIII

But Lanny was making a mistake, as he discovered later in the evening. The stiff aristocrat approached him and spoke again, in a more cordial tone. "Mr. Budd, I have been realizing, I remember you in Stubendorf. Also I have heard Meissner speak of you."

"Herr Meissner has treated me as if I were another of his sons," replied Lanny, modestly.

"Ein braver Mensch," said Seine Hochgeboren. "His sons have rendered admirable service." He went on to speak of the family of his Comptroller-General, upon whose capability and integrity he depended as had his father before him. While hearing this formal speech, Lanny guessed what must have happened. The dowager Valkyrie had reminded the General Graf that this was the lucky young Taugenichts who had married the fabulously wealthy heiress. Not, as Seine Hochgeboren had supposed, some young snipe trying to make himself important by claiming intimacy with one of a nobleman’s employees!

So here was a great aristocrat manifesting condescension, noblesse oblige. He knew all about Mr. Budd, oh, of course! "Kurt Meissner composed much of his music in your home, I have heard." He didn’t add: "Kurt Meissner was your mother’s lover for many years, I have heard." He talked about Kurt’s compositions and showed that he really knew about them; echt deutsche Musik which could be praised without reserve. A young Franco-American who had built a studio for a musical genius to work in could meet on equal terms a Junker who had furnished a cottage for the genius to raise his

family in.

Presently it came out that Lanny had served as a secretary-translator on the staff of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace. "I should be interested to talk to you about those Paris days," remarked the officer. "You might be able to explain some points about the American attitude which have always been a mystery to me."

"I should be pleased to do my best," said Lanny, politely. "You must realize that your beautiful Schloss made a great impression upon a small boy, and your father and yourself appeared to me as very grand personalities."

Seine Hochgeboren smiled graciously. He hadn’t the slightest doubt that, his father had been a grand personality, or that he was one now. "Are you planning to come to Stubendorf this Christmas?" he inquired.

"Kurt has been inviting us," was the reply. "I am not sure if we can arrange it."

"I would be happy if you and your wife would visit the Schloss as my guests," said the General Graf.

"Thank you very much," replied the younger man. "I should have to ask the Meissners to give us up."

"I think they would do so," the other suggested, dryly.

"I will let you know a little later. I must consult my wife." Another peculiarity of Americans—they consulted their wives instead of telling them! But of course when the wife was as rich as this one —what was her name?

XIV

They watched that valuable wife, dancing with a handsome young attache of the American embassy staff. She was more than ever the young brunette Juno; some skilled couturier must have had the thought, for he had made her a gown of white silk chiffon with a hint of ancient Greece in it. For jewels she wore only her double rope of pearls; a fortune such as hers was beyond any quantity of stones to symbolize, and had better be left to the newspapers to proclaim. She danced with stately grace, smiled gently, and never chattered; yes, a young goddess, and an ornament to any Schieber’s ballroom.

When the party was over, Lanny escorted her upstairs. She had promised to have no more than two glasses of champagne, and had kept her word, but was not a little excited by the presence of so many distinguished persons, all of whom had costumes, manners, and modes of speech calculated to impress the daughter of a onetime Wall Street errand boy. She and her husband talked about this one and that while the maid helped her off with her gown. After she had rested for the required fifteen minutes, the baby was brought in for a nursing; quite a bundle now, nearly eight months old, and full of kicks and squirms and gurgles. She never needed any invitation, but took hold promptly, and while she worked away, Lanny told the mother about the invitation to Stubendorf. He had talked a lot about the "Christmas-card castle" with its snow-covered roofs gleaming in the early morning sunshine, and had made it seem as romantic to Irma as it had to him seventeen years ago.

"Shall we go?" she asked.

"If you would enjoy it."

"I think it would be ducky!" Then, after some reflection: "You and I really make a pretty good social team, don’t we, Lanny!"

I

THE results of the election had set Heinrich Jung in a seat of authority. He called Lanny on the telephone and poured out his exultation. There was no party but the N.S.D.A.P., and Heinrich was its prophet! Therefore, would Lanny come to his home some evening and meet his wife and one of his friends? Lanny said he would be happy to do so; he had just received a letter from Rick, saying that the German vote had made a great impression in England, and if Lanny would send a bunch of literature and some of his own notes as to the state of mind of the country, Rick could write an article for one of the weeklies. Lanny wanted to help his friend, and thought the English people ought to understand what the new movement signified. This, of course, was right down Heinrich’s alley; he volunteered to assemble a load of literature—and even to have the article written and save Rick the bother!

Lanny left his wife in a comfortable family bridge game while he drove out to the suburbs toward Potsdam, where the young official lived in a modest cottage. Heinrich had chosen himself a proper deutsches Mädel with eyes as blue as his own, and according to the Nazi-Nordic principles they had set to work to increase the ruling race. They proudly showed two blond darlings asleep in their cribs, and one glance at Ilsa Jung was enough to inform Lanny that another would soon be added. There was a peculiarity of the Nazi doctrine which Lanny had observed already among the Italian Fascists. Out of one side of their mouths they said that the nation had to expand in order to have room for its growing population, while out of the other side they said that their population must be increased in order that they might be able to expand. In the land of Mussolini this need was known as sacro egoismo, and Lanny had tried in vain to puzzle out why a quality which was, considered so offensive in an individual should become holy when exhibited by a group. He hoped that a day might come when nations would be gentlemen.

Heinrich had invited to meet his guest a sports director of one of the youth groups in Berlin. Hugo Behr was his name, and he was another exemplar of the Nordic ideal—which oddly enough a great many of the party leaders were not. There was a joke going the rounds among Berlin’s smart intellectuals that the ideal "Aryan" was required to be as blond as Hitler, as tall as Goebbels, as slender as Goring, and so on, as far as your malicious memory would carry you. But Hugo had smooth rosy cheeks and wavy golden hair, and doubtless when in a gym costume presented a figure like that of a young Hermes. He had until recently been an ardent Social-Democrat, a worker in the youth movement in that party; not only could he tell all its scandals, but he knew how to present National Socialism as the only true and real Socialism, by which the German workers were to win freedom for themselves and later for the workers of the world.

The human mind is a strange thing. Both this pair had read Mein Kampf as their holy book, and had picked out what they wanted from it. They knew that Lanny had also read the book, and assumed that he would have picked out the same things. But Lanny had noted other passages, in which the Führer had made it clear that he hadn’t the slightest interest in giving freedom to the workers of other nations or races, but on the contrary was determined to put them all to work for the benefit of the master race. "Aryan" was merely a fancy word for German—and for other persons of education and social position who were willing to join with the Nazis and help them to seize power.

However, Lanny wasn’t there to convert two Nazi officials. He permitted Hugo Behr to speak to him as one comrade to another, and now and then he made notes of something which might be of interest to the reading public of Britain. Hugo was newer in the movement than Heinrich, and more naive; he had swallowed the original Nazi program, hook, line, and sinker; that was the creed, and when you had quoted it, you had settled the point at issue. Lanny Budd, cynical worldling, product of several decadent cultures, wanted to say: "How can Hitler be getting funds from von Papen and the other Junkers if he really means to break up the great landed estates of Prussia? How can he be getting funds from Fritz Thyssen and the other steel kings if he means to socialize big industry?" But what good would it do? Hugo doubtless thought that all the party funds came from the pfennigs of the workers; that banners and brassards, brown shirts and shiny boots, automatic pistols and Budd machine guns were purchased with the profits of literature sales! Heinrich, perhaps, knew better, but wouldn’t admit it, and Lanny wasn’t free to name the sources of his own information. Better simply to listen, and make careful notes, and let Rick write an article entitled: "England, Awake!"

II

Right after the elections came a trial in Berlin of three officers charged with having made Nazi propaganda in the army. It attracted a great deal of public attention, and Adolf Hitler appeared as a witness and delivered one of his characteristic tirades, declaring that when his party took power the "November criminals," meaning the men who had established the Republic, would be judged by a people’s tribunal. "Heads will roll in the sand," he said. Such language shocked the civilized German people, and Johannes Robin took it as a proof of what he had been saying to Lanny, that all you had to do was to give this fellow rope enough and he would hang himself. There was a demand from many quarters that Hitler be tried for treason; but probably the government was of the same opinion as Johannes. Why hang a man who was so ready to hang himself? The three officers were dismissed from the army, and Adi went on making his propaganda—in the army as everywhere else.

Lanny invited Hauptmann Emil Meissner to lunch with him, and they talked about these problems. Kurt’s eldest brother, a World War veteran, had the younger’s pale blue eyes and close-cropped straw-colored hair, but not his ardent temperament; he agreed with Lanny that Kurt had been led astray, and that the Führer was a dangerous fanatic. Emil was loyal to the existing government; he said that would always be the attitude of the army, and was the obligation of every officer, no matter how much he might disapprove the policies of the politicians in control.

"Would you obey the Nazis if they should take power?" inquired the American.

Emil shut his eyes for a moment, as if to hide the painful reaction which such a question caused in him. "I don’t think it is necessary to contemplate that," he said.

Lanny replied: "The present election has made me do it." But he didn’t press the point.

Emil placed his faith in Germany’s symbol of loyalty, Feldmarschall and now Prasident Paul Ludwig Hans Anton von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg. The old commander had won the battle of Tannenberg, the one complete victory the Germans had gained, with the result that the people had idolized him all through the rest of the war. In every town they had set up huge wooden statues of him, and it had been the supreme act of patriotism to buy nails and drive them into this statue, the money going to the German Red Cross. The Hindenburg line had been another name for national security, and now the Hindenburg presidency was the same. But the stern old titan was now eighty-three years old, and his wits were growing dim; it was hard for him to concentrate upon complex matters. The politicians swarmed about him, they pulled him this way and that, and it was painful to him and tragic to those who saw it.

Emil Meissner had been on the old field marshal’s staff during part of the war, and knew his present plight; but Emil was reserved in the presence of a foreigner, especially one who consorted with Jews and had a sister and a brother-in-law love to Adolf Hitler, and reported that the President refused to recognize this upstart even as an Austrian, but persisted in referring to him as "the Bohemian corporal," and using the name of his father, which was Schicklgruber, a plebeian and humiliating name. Der alte Herr had steadily refused to meet Corporal Schicklgruber, because he talked too much, and in the army it was customary for a non-commissioned officer to wait for his superior to speak first.

Emil expressed his ideas concerning the disorders which prevailed in the cities of the Republic, amounting to a civil war between the two sets of extremists. The Reds had begun it, without doubt, and the Brownshirts were the answer they had got; but Emil called it an atrocious thing that anybody should be permitted to organize a private army as Hitler had done. Hardly a night passed that the rival groups didn’t clash in the streets, and Emil longed for a courageous Chancellor who would order the Reichswehr to disarm both sides. The Nazi Führer pretended to deplore what his followers did, but of course that was nonsense; every speech he made was an incitement to more violence—like that insane talk about heads rolling in the sand.

So far two cultivated and modern men could agree over their coffee-cups. But Emil went on to reveal that he was a German like the others. He said that fundamentally the situation was due to the Allies and their monstrous treaty of Versailles; Germany had been stripped of everything by the reparations demands, deprived of her ships, colonies, and trade—and no people ever would starve gladly. Lanny had done his share of protesting against Versailles, and had argued for helping Germany to get on her feet again; but somehow, when he listened to Germans, he found himself shifting to the other side and wishing to remind them that they had lost the war. After all, it hadn’t been a game of ping-pong, and somebody had to pay for it. Also, Germany had had her program of what she meant to do if she had won; she had revealed it clearly in the terms she had forced upon Russia at Brest-Litovsk. Also, there had been a Franco-Prussian War, and Germany had taken Alsace-Lorraine; there had been Frederick the Great and the partition of Poland; there had been a whole string of Prussian conquests—but whose redness was notorious. On the other hand, an officer of the Reichswehr owed no you had better not mention them if you wanted to have friends in the Fatherland!

III

Three evenings a week Freddi and Rahel went to the school which they helped to support. Freddi taught a class in the history of economic theory and Rahel taught one in singing, both subjects important for German workers. Lanny went along more than once, and when the students old and young discovered that he lived in France and had helped with a school there, they wanted to hear about conditions in that country and what the workers were thinking and doing. Discussions arose, and Lanny discovered that the disciplined and orderly working people of Germany were not so different from the independent and free-spoken bunch in the Midi. The same problems vexed them, the same splits turned every discussion into a miniature war.

Could the workers "take over" by peaceable processes? You could tell the answer by the very words in which the speaker put the question. If he said "by parliamentary action," he was some sort of Socialist; if he said "by electing politicians," he was some sort of Communist. The former had the prestige of the greatest party of the Fatherland behind him, and quoted Marx, Bebel, and Kautsky. His opponent in the controversy took the Soviet Union for his model, and quoted Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. Between the two extremes were those who followed the recently exiled Trotsky, or the martyred Karl Liebknecht and "Red Rosa" Luxemburg. There were various "splinter groups" that Lanny hadn’t heard of; indeed, it appeared that the nearer the rebel workers came to danger, the more they fought among themselves. Lanny compared them to people on a sinking ship trying to throw one another overboard.

At the school the "Sozis" were in a majority; and Lanny would explain to them his amiable idea that all groups ought to unite against the threat of National Socialism. Since he was a stranger, and Freddi’s brother-in-law, they would be patient and explain that nobody could co-operate with the Communists, because they wouldn’t let you. Nobody talked more about co-operating than the Communists, but when you tried it you found that what they meant was undermining your organization and poisoning the minds of your followers, the process known as "boring from within." Any Socialist you talked to was ready with a score of illustrations— and also with citations from Lenin, to prove that it was no accident, but a policy.

Members of the Social-Democratic party went even further; they charged that the Communists were co-operating with the Nazis against the coalition government in which the Social-Democrats were participating. That too was a policy; the Bolsheviks believed in making chaos, because they hoped to profit from it; chaos had given them their chance to seize power in Russia, and the fact that it hadn’t in Italy did not cause them to revise the theory. It was easy for them to co-operate with Nazis, because both believed in force, in dictatorship; the one great danger that the friends of peaceful change confronted was a deal, more or less open, between the second and third largest parties of Germany. To Lanny that seemed a sort of nightmare—not the idea that it might happen, but the fact that the Socialists should have got themselves into such a state of hatred of another working-class party that they were willing to believe such a deal might be made. Once more he had to sink back into the role of listener, keep his thoughts to himself, and not tell Hansi and Bess what the friends of Freddi and Rahel were teaching in their school.

IV

Once a week the institution gave a reception; the' Left intellectuals came, and drank coffee and ate great quantities of Leberivurst and Schweizerkase sandwiches, and discussed the policies of the school and the events of the time. Then indeed the forces of chaos and old night were released. Lanny decided that every Berlin intellectual was a new political party, and every two Berlin intellectuals were a political conflict. Some of them wore long hair because it looked picturesque, and others because they didn’t own a pair of scissors. Some came because they wanted an audience, and others because it was a chance to get a meal. But whatever their reason, nothing could keep them quiet, and nothing could get them to agree. Lanny had always thought that loud voices and vehement gestures marked the Latin races, but now he decided that it wasn’t a matter of race at all, but of economic determinism. The nearer a country came to a crisis, the more noise its intellectuals made in drawing-rooms!

Lanny made the mistake of taking his wife to one of these gatherings, and she didn’t enjoy it. In the first place, most of the arguing was done in German, which is rarely a very pleasant-sounding language unless it has been written by Heine; it appears to the outsider to involve a great deal of coughing, spitting, and rumbling in the back of the throat. Of course there were many who were able to speak English of a sort, and were willing to try it on Lanny’s wife; but they wished to talk about personalities, events, and doctrines which were for the most part strange to her. Irma’s great forte in social life was serenity, and somehow this wasn’t the place to show it off.

She commented on this to her husband, who said: "You must understand that most of these people are having a hard time keeping alive. Many of them don’t get enough to eat, and that is disturbing to one’s peace of mind."

He went on to explain what was called the "intellectual proletariat": a mass of persons who had acquired education at heavy cost of both mind and body, but who now found no market for what they had to offer to the world. They made a rather miserable livelihood by hack-writing, or teaching—whatever odd jobs they could pick up. Naturally they were discontented, and felt themselves in sympathy with the dispossessed workers.

"But why don’t they go and get regular jobs, Lanny?"

"What sort of jobs, dear? Digging ditches, or clerking in a store, or waiting on table?"

"Anything, I should think, so long as they can earn an honest living."

"Many of them have to do it, but it’s not so easy as it sounds.

There are four million unemployed in Germany right now, and a job usually goes to somebody who has been trained for that kind of work."

Thus patiently Lanny would explain matters, as if to a child. The trouble was, he had to explain it many times, for Irma appeared reluctant to believe it. He was trying to persuade her that the time was cruelly out of joint, whereas she had been brought up to believe that everything was for the best in the best of all possible worlds. If people didn’t get jobs and keep them, it must be because there was something wrong with those people; they didn’t really want to work; they wanted to criticize and sneer at others who had been successful, who had worked hard, as Irma’s father had done. He had left her secure. Who could blame her for wanting to stay that way, and resenting people who pulled her about, clamored in her ears, upset her mind with arguments?

It wasn’t that she was hard of heart, not at all. Some pitiful beggar would come up to her on the street, and tears would start into her eyes, and she would want to give him the contents of her well-filled purse. But that was charity, and she learned that Lanny’s friends all spurned this; they wanted a thing they called "justice." They required you to agree that the social system was fundamentally wrong, and that most of what Irma’s parents and teachers and friends had taught her was false. They demanded that the world be turned upside down and that they, the rebels, be put in charge of making it over. Irma decided that she didn’t trust either their capacity or their motives. She watched them, and announced her decision to her too credulous husband: "They are jealous, and want what we’ve got, and if we gave it to them they wouldn’t even say thank you!"

"Maybe so," replied the husband, who had suffered not a few disillusionments himself. "It’s no use expecting human beings to be better than they are. Some are true idealists, like Hansi and Freddi."

"Yes, but they work; they would succeed in any world. But those politicians, and intellectuals who want to be politicians but don’t know how — Lanny laughed; he saw that she was beginning to use her own head. "What you have to do," he cautioned, "is to consider principles and not individuals. We want a system that will give everybody a chance at honest and constructive labor, and then, see that nobody lives without working."

V

The daughter of J. Paramount Barnes was forced to admit that there was something wrong, because her dividends were beginning to fall off. In the spring she had been hearing about the little bull market, which had sounded fine; but during the summer and fall had come a series of slumps, no less than four, one after another. Nobody understood these events, nobody could predict them. You would hear people say: "The bottom has been reached now; things are bound to take a turn." They would bet their money on it— and then, next day or next week, stocks would be tumbling and everybody terrified.

There came a letter from Irma’s uncle Joseph, one of the trustees who managed her estate. He warned her about what was happening, and explained matters as well as he could; during the past year her blue-chip stocks had lost another thirty points, below the lowest mark of the great panic when she had been in New York. It appeared to be a vicious circle: the slump caused fear, and fear caused another slump. The elections in Germany had had a bad reaction in Wall Street; everybody decided there wouldn’t be any more reparations payments. Mr. Joseph Barnes added that there hadn’t really been any for a long time, and perhaps never had been, since the Germans first borrowed in Wall Street whatever they wished to pay. Irma didn’t understand this very well, but gave the letter to Lanny, who explained it to her—of course from his Pink point of view.

One thing Uncle Joseph made plain: Irma must be careful how she spent money! Her answer was obvious: she had been living on the Robins for half a year, and when she went back to Bienvenu they would resume that ridiculously simple life. You just couldn’t spend money when you lived in a small villa; you had no place to put things, and no way to entertain on a large scale. Lanny and his mother had lived on thirteen hundred dollars a month, whereas Irma had been accustomed to spend fifty times that. So she had no trouble in assuring her conscientious uncle that she would give heed to his advice. Her mother had decided not to come to Europe that winter; she was busy cutting down the expenses of the Long Island estate. Lanny read the letter and experienced the normal feelings of a man who learns that his mother-in-law is not coming to visit him.

VI

Heinrich Jung called Lanny on the telephone. "Would you like to meet the Führer?" he inquired.

"Oh, my gosh!" exclaimed Lanny, taken aback. "He wouldn’t be interested in me."

"He says he would."

"What did you tell him about me?"

"I said that you were an old friend, and the patron of Kurt Meissner."

Lanny thought for a moment. "Did you tell him that I don’t agree with his ideas?"

"Of course. Do you suppose he’s only interested in meeting people who agree with him?"

Lanny had supposed something of the sort, but he was too polite to answer directly. Instead he asked: "Did you say that I might become a convert?"

"I said it might be worth while to try."

"But really, Heinrich, it isn’t." "You might take a chance, if he’s willing."

Lanny laughed. "Of course he’s an interesting man, and I’ll enjoy meeting him."

"All right, come ahead."

"You’re sure it won’t injure your standing?"

"My standing? I went three times to visit him while he was a prisoner in the Landsberg fortress, and he is a man who never forgets a friend."

"All right, then, when shall we go?"

"The sooner the better. He’s in Berlin now, but he jumps about a lot."

"You set the time."

"Are you free this afternoon?"

"I can get free."

Heinrich called again, saying that the appointment was for four o’clock, and he would be waiting for Lanny in front of the headquarters at three-thirty. When he was in the car and had given the address, he began, with some signs of hesitation: "You know, American manners are not quite the same as German. The Führer, of course, understands that you are an American—"

"I hope he won’t expect me to say 'Heil Hitler!"

"Oh, no, of course not. You will shake hands with him."

"Shall I address him as Er?" Lanny had read a recent announcement of the introduction of this custom, previously reserved for royalty. It meant speaking in the third person.

"That will not be expected of a foreigner. But it is better if one doesn’t contradict him. You know that he is under heavy pressure these days—"

"I understand." From many sources Lanny had heard that Adi was a highly excitable person; some even called him psychopathic.

"I don’t mean that you have to agree with him," the other hastened to add. "It’s all right if you just listen. He is very kind about explaining his ideas to people."

"Sure thing." Lanny kept a perfectly straight face. "I have read Mein Kampf, and this will be a sort of postscript. Five years have passed, and a lot has happened."

"Isn’t it marvelous how much has come true!" exclaimed the faithful young "Aryan."

VII

The Partei- und oberster S.A. Führer, Vorsitzender der N.S.D.A.P., lived in one of those elegant apartment houses having a uniformed doorkeeper. The Führer was a vegetarian, and an abstainer from alcohol and tobacco, but not an ascetic as to interior decoration; on the contrary, he thought himself an artist and enjoyed fixing up his surroundings. With the money of Fritz Thyssen and other magnates he had bought a palace in Munich and made it over into a showplace, the Nazi Braune Haus; also for the apartment in Berlin he had got modernistic furniture of the utmost elegance. He lived with a married couple to take care of him, South Germans and friends of his earlier days. They had two children, and Adi was playing some sort of parlor game with them when the visitors were brought in. He kept the little ones for a while, talking to them and about them part of the time; his fondness for children was his better side, and Lanny would have been pleased if he had not had to see any other.

The Führer wore a plain business suit, and presented the aspect of a simple, unassuming person. He shook hands with his Franco-American guest, patted Heinrich on the back, and called for fruit juice and cookies for all of them. He asked Lanny about his boyhood on the Riviera, and the children listened with open eyes to stories about hauling the seine and bringing in cuttlefish and small sharks; about digging in one’s garden and finding ancient Roman coins; about the "little Septentrion child" who had danced and pleased in the arena of Antibes a couple of thousand years ago. Adi Schicklgruber’s own childhood had been unhappy and he didn’t talk about it.

Presently he asked where Lanny had met Kurt Meissner, and the visitor told about the Dalcroze school at Hellerau. His host took this as a manifestation of German culture, and Lanny forbore to mention that Jaques-Dalcroze was a Swiss of French descent. It was true that the school had been built and endowed by a German patron. Said Hitler: "That kind of thing will be the glory of our National Socialist administration; there will be such an outburst of artistic and musical genius as will astound the world." Lanny noted that in all the conversation he took it for granted that the N.S.D.A.P. would soon be in control of Germany; he never said "if," he said "when"—and this was one of the subjects on which the visitor was surely not going to contradict him.

They talked about Kurt and his music, which was pure "Aryan," so the Führer declared; nothing meretricious, no corrupt foreign influences; life in France for so many years had apparently not affected the composer in the slightest. Lanny explained that Kurt had kept almost entirely to himself, and had seldom gone out unless one dragged him. He told about his life at Bienvenu, and the Führer agreed that it was the ideal way for an artist. "It is the sort of life I would have chosen; but, alas, I was born under a different star." Lanny had heard that he believed in astrology, and hoped he wouldn’t get onto that subject.

VIII

What the Führer of all the Nazis planned was for this elegant and extremely wealthy young foreigner to go out to the world as a convert to the National Socialist ideas. To that end he laid himself out to be charming, for which he had no small endowment. He had evidently inquired as to Lanny’s point of view, for everything he said was subtly directed to meeting that. Lanny was a Socialist, and Hitler, too, was a Socialist, the only true, practical kind of Socialist. Out of the chaos of competitive capitalism a new order was about to arise; an order that would endure, because it would be founded upon real understanding and guided by scientists. Not the evil, degenerate Socialism of the Marxists, which repudiated all that was most precious in human beings; not a Socialism poisoned with the delusion of internationalism, but one founded upon recognition of the great racial qualities which alone made such a task conceivable.

Patiently and kindly the Führer explained that his ideas of race were not German in the narrow sense. Lanny, too, was an "Aryan," and so were the cultured classes in America; theirs was a truly "Aryan" civilization, and so was the British. "I want nothing in the world so much as understanding and peace between my country and Britain, and I think there has been no tragedy in modern times so great as the war they fought. Why can we not understand one another and get together in friendship for our common task? The world is big enough, and it is full of mongrel tribes whom we dare not permit to gain power, because they are incapable of making any intelligent use of it."

Hitler talked for a while about these mongrels. He felt quite safe in telling a young Franco-American what he thought about the Japanese, a sort of hairless yellow monkeys. Then he came to the Russians, who were by nature lazy, incompetent, and bloodthirsty, and had fallen into the hands of gutter-rats and degenerates. He talked about the French, and was careful of what he said; he wanted no enmity between France and Germany; they could make a treaty of peace that would last for a thousand years, if only the French would give up their imbecile idea of encircling Germany and keeping her ringed with foes. "It is the Polish alliance and the Little Entente which keep enmity between our peoples; for we do not intend to let those peoples go on ruling Germans, and we have an iron determination to right the wrongs which were committed at Versailles. You must know something about that, Mr. Budd, for you have been to Stubendorf, and doubtless have seen with your own eyes what it means for Germans to be governed by Poles."

Lanny answered: "I was one of many Americans at the Peace Conference who pleaded against that mistake."

So the Führer warmed to his visitor. "The shallow-minded call my attitude imperialism; but that is an abuse of language. It is not imperialism to recognize the plain evidence of history that certain peoples have the capacity to build a culture while others are lacking in it entirely. It is not imperialism to say that a vigorous and great-souled people like the Germans shall not be surrounded and penned in by jealous and greedy rivals. It is not imperialism to say that these little children shall not suffer all their lives the deprivations which they have suffered so far."

The speaker was running his hand over the closely cropped blond head of the little boy. "This Bübchen was born in the year of the great shame, that wicked Versailles Diktat. You can see that he is thin and undersized, because of the starvation blockade. But I have told him that his children will be as sturdy as his father was, because I intend to deliver the Fatherland from the possibility of blockades—and I shall not worry if my enemies call me an imperialist. I have written that every man becomes an imperialist when he begets a child, for he obligates himself to see to it that that child has the means of life provided."

Lanny, a Socialist not untainted with internationalism, could have thought of many things to answer; but he had no desire to spoil this most amiable of interviews. So long as a tiger was willing to purr, Lanny was pleased to study tigers. He might have been influenced by the many gracious words which had been spoken to him, if it had not been for having read Mein Kampf. How could the author of that book imagine that he could claim, for example, to have no enmity against France? Or had he changed his mind in five years? Apparently not, for he had formed a publishing-house which was selling his bible to all the loyal followers of the National Socialist German Workingmen’s Party, and at the price of twelve marks per copy somebody was making a fortune.

IX

Lanny thought: "I am taking a lot of a busy man’s time." But he knew that when you are calling on royalty you do not leave until you are dismissed; and perhaps it would be the same here. The children had been sent away, it being their suppertime; but still the Führer went on talking. Heinrich Jung sat leaning forward with an aspect of strained attention, and there was nothing for Lanny to do but follow his example.

The Führer retold the wrongs which had been done to his country; and as he went on he became more and more aroused, his voice swelled and he became the orator. Lanny remembered having read somewhere of Queen Victoria’s complaining about her audiences with Gladstone: "He treats me as if I were a public meeting." Lanny found it somewhat embarrassing to be shouted at from a distance of six feet. He thought: "Good Lord, with this much energy the man could address all Germany!" But apparently Adolf Hitler had enough energy for all Germany and for a foreign visitor also; it was for him to decide how much to expend, and for the visitor to sit and gaze at him like a fascinated rabbit at a hissing snake.

Lanny had seen this same thing happen at several meetings. The Führer took fire from his own phrases; he was moved to action by his own eloquence. Now, now was the moment to overthrow these enemies of the Fatherland, to punish them for their crimes. Heads will roll in the sand! The orator forgot all about being sweet and reasonable for the benefit of a member of two of these enemy nations. Perhaps he thought that Lanny, having heard the whole story of Versailles, of reparations and starvation blockade and Ruhr invasion and Polish alliance and all the rest, must now be completely a convert. Away with the pretense that the Führer of the Nazis did not hate the French for their avarice, the British for their arrogance, the Americans for their upstart pretensions, the Bolsheviks for being bloodthirsty monsters, the Jews for being the spawn of hell. In short, he became that man of frenzy whom Lanny and Rick had first heard in the Burgerbraukeller in Munich seven years ago. Lanny had said: "One must admit that he is sincere," and Rick had replied: "So are most lunatics."

How long this would have continued no one could say. The housekeeper opened the door and said: "Verzeihung, mein Führer. Herr Strasser." Behind her came, without delay, a large man in S.A. uniform. He had large, rather coarse features, a somewhat bulbous nose, a drooping mouth with deep lines at the sides. According to the practice with which Lanny was familiar he should have halted in the doorway, clicked his heels, given the Nazi salute, and said: "Heil Hitler!" Instead he came forward, remarking in a nonchalant way: "Grüß Gott, Adolf." This meant that he was an old friend, and also that he came from Bavaria.

The visitors were greatly startled by the Führer’s response, delivered with the force of a blow: "You have not been conducting yourself as a friend, and therefore you have not been summoned as a friend!" The speaker rose to his feet and, pointing an accusing finger at the new arrival, went on: "Learn once for all, I have had enough of your insubordination! You continue at your peril!" It set the big man back on his heels, and his large mouth dropped open.

Would the Führer of the Nazis have attacked his subordinate in that abrupt and violent way if he had not already got steamed up? Impossible to say; but the astonishment and dismay of Herr Strasser were apparent. He opened his mouth as if to ask what was the matter, but then he closed it again, for he got no chance. Hitler was launched upon a tirade; he rushed at the man—not to strike him, but to thrust the accusing finger within a couple of inches of the big nose and shriek:

"Your intrigues are known! Your insolence is resented! Your public utterances are incitements to treason, and if you do not mend your ways you will be driven out. Go and join your brother’s Schwarze Front, and the other disguised Communists and scoundrels! I—I, Adolf Hitler, am the Führer of the N.S.D.A.P., and it is for me to determine policies. I will not have opposition, I will not have argument, I will have obedience. We are in the midst of a war, and I demand loyalty, I demand discipline. "Zucht! Zucht! Zucht!" It is one of those many German words which require a clearing of the throat, and the unfortunate Strasser flinched as if from a rain of small particles of moisture.

"Adolf, who has been telling you stories about me?" He forced the sentence in while the Führer caught his breath.

"I make it my business to know what is going on in my movement. Do you imagine that you can go about expressing contempt for my policies without word of it coming to me?"

"Somebody has been lying, Adolf. I have said only what I have said to you: that now is the time for action, and that our foes desire nothing but delay, so that they can weaken us by their intrigues".

"They weaken us because of arrogance and self-will in my own party officials; because these presumptuous ones dare to set themselves up as authorities and thinkers. I think for the National Socialists, I—and I have ordered you to hold your tongue—Maul halten— and obey my orders, follow my policies and not your own stupid notions. Your brother has turned himself into a criminal and an outlaw because of that same arrogance"

"Leave Otto out of it, Adolf. You know that I have broken with him. I do not see him and have no dealings with him."

"Ich geb''n Dreck d’rum!" cried Adolf; he spoke that kind of German. Talking to a Bavarian, he added: "Das ist mir Sau-wurscht!"

He rushed on: "You stay in the party and carry on Otto’s agitation in favor of discarded policies. I am the captain of this ship, and it is not for the crew to tell me what to do, but to do what I tell them. Once more, I demand unity in the face of our foes. Understand me, I command it! I speak as your Führer!"

Lanny thought he had never seen a man so beside himself with excitement. Adolf Hitler’s face had become purple, he danced about as he talked, and every word was emphasized as with a hammer blow of his finger. Lanny thought the two men would surely fight; but no, presently he saw that the other was going to take it. Perhaps he had seen the same thing happen before, and had learned to deal with it. He stopped arguing, stopped trying to protest; he simply stood there and let his Führer rave, let the storm blow itself out— if it ever would blow itself out. Would the ocean ever be the same after such a hurricane?

X

Lanny had learned much about the internal affairs of the Nazi party from the conversation of Kurt and Heinrich. Also, during the summer he had been getting the German papers, and these had been full of a furious party conflict over the question of the old program, which Hitler had been paring down until now there was nothing left of it. Here in North Germany many of the Nazis took the "Socialist" part of their label seriously; they insisted upon talking about the communizing of department stores, the confiscation of landed estates, the ending of interest slavery, common wealth before private wealth, and so on. It had caused a regular civil war in the party earlier in the year. The two Strasser brothers, Gregor and Otto, had fought for the old program and had been beaten.

Gregor had submitted, but Otto had quit the party and organized a revolutionary group of his own, which the Hitlerites called the "Black Front" and which they were fighting with bludgeons and revolvers, just as they fought the Communists. Later on, immediately before the elections, there had been another attempt at internal revolution; the rebels had seized the offices of the Berlin party paper, Der Angriff, holding it by force of arms and publishing the paper for three days. A tremendous scandal, and one which the enemies of the movement had not failed to exploit.

So here was Gregor Strasser, Reich Organization Leader Number 1. A lieutenant in the World War, he had become an apothecary, but had given up his business in order to oppose the Reds and then to help Adi prepare for the Beerhall Putsch. He was perhaps the most competent organizer the party had, and had come to Berlin and built the Sturmabteilung by his efforts. Hitler, distrusting him as too far to the left, had formed a new personal guard, the Schutz-staffel, or S.S. So there were two rival armies inside the Nazi party of all Germany; which was going to prevail?

Lanny wondered, had Hitler really lost his temper or was this merely a policy? Was this the way Germans enforced obedience— the drill-sergeant technique? Apparently it was working, for the big man’s bull voice dropped low; he stood meekly and took his licking like a schoolboy ordered to let down his pants. Lanny wondered also: why did the Führer permit a foreigner to witness such a demonstration? Did he think it would impress an American? Did he love power so much that it pleased him to exhibit it in the presence of strangers? Or did he feel so secure in his mastery that he didn’t care what anybody thought of him? This last appeared to be in character with his procedure of putting his whole defiant program into a book and selling it to anybody in the world who had twelve marks.

Lanny listened again to the whole story of Mein Kampf. He learned that Adolf Hitler meant to outwit the world, but in his own good time and in his own way. He meant to suppress his land program to please the Junkers and his industrial program to please the steel kings, and so get their money and use it to buy arms for his S.A. and his S.S. He meant to promise everything to everybody and so get their votes—everybody except the abscheulichen Bolschewisten and the verfluchten Juden. He meant to get power and take office, and nobody was going to block him from his goal. If any Dummkopf tried it he would crush him like a louse, and he told him so.

When Strasser ventured to point out that Dr. Joseph Goebbels, the Führer’s favorite propagandist, had said that he was developing a "legality complex," the Führer replied that he would deal with "Juppchen" at his own convenience; he was dealing now with Gregor Strasser, and telling him that he was not to utter another word of criticism of his Führer’s policies, but to devote his energies to putting down the Reds and teaching discipline to his organization, which lacked it so shamefully. Adolf Hitler would do his own dickering with the politicians, playing them one against another, worming his way closer and closer to the chancellorship which was his goal—and in due course he would show them all, and his own friends would be ashamed of their blindness and presumption in having doubted their inspired leader.

So Lanny received a demonstration of what it meant to be a master of men. Perhaps that was what the Führer intended; for not until he had received the submission of his Reich Organization Leader Number 1 and had dismissed him did he turn again to his guest. "Well, Mr. Budd," he said, "you see what it takes to put people to work for a cause. Wouldn’t you like to come and help me?"

Said Lanny: "I am afraid I am without any competence for such a task". If there was a trace of dryness in his tone the Führer missed it, for he smiled amiably, and seemed to be of the opinion that he had done a very good afternoon’s work.

Long afterward Lanny learned from Kurt Meissner what the Führer thought about that meeting. He said that young Mr. Budd was a perfect type of the American privileged classes: good-looking, easy-going, and perfectly worthless. It would be a very simple task to cause that nation to split itself to pieces, and the National Socialist movement would take it in charge.

I

IN THE month of December Irma and Rahel completed the tremendous feat they had undertaken; having kept the pact they had made with each other and with their families, they were now physically and morally free. The condition of two lusty infants appeared to indicate that Rousseau and Lanny had been right. Little by little the greedy sucklings learned to take the milk of real cows instead of imitation ones; they acquired a taste for fruit juices and for prune pulp with the skins carefully removed. At last the young mothers could go to a bridge party without having to leave in the middle of it.

Marceline with her governess had returned to Juan at the end of the yacht cruise, and her mother had promised to join her for Christmas. Farewells were said to the Robin family, and Beauty and her husband went by train, taking the baby, Miss Severne, the nursemaid, and Madame. The General Graf Stubendorf’s invitation to Lanny and Irma had been renewed, and Kurt had written that they should by all means accept; not only would it be more pleasant for Irma at the Schloss, but it would advantage the Meissners to have an old friend return as a guest of Seine Hochgeboren. Lanny noted this with interest and explained it to his wife; what would have been snobbery in America was loyalty in Silesia. The armies of Napoleon having never reached that land, the feudal system still prevailed and rank was a reality.

Stubendorf being in Poland, the train had to stop, and luggage and passports to be examined. The village itself was German, and only the poorer part of the peasantry was Polish. This made a situation full of tension, and no German thought of it as anything but a truce. What the Poles thought, Lanny didn’t know, for he couldn’t talk with them. In Berlin he had shown his wife a comic paper and a cartoon portraying Poland as an enormous fat hog, being ridden by a French army officer who was twisting the creature’s tail to make it gallop and waving a saber to show why he was in a hurry. Not exactly the Christmas spirit!

Irma Barnes Budd explored the feudal system, and found it not so different from the South Shore of Long Island. She was met at the train by a limousine, which would have happened at home. A five-story castle didn’t awe her, for she had been living in one that was taller and twice as broad. The lady who welcomed her was certainly no taller or broader than Mrs. Fanny Barnes, and couldn’t be more proud of her blood. The principal differences were, first, that the sons and daughters of this Prussian family worked harder than any young people Irma had ever known; and, second, there were uniforms and ceremonies expressive of rank and station. Irma gave close attention to these, and her husband wondered if she was planning to introduce them into the New World.

Visiting his father’s home in Connecticut, Lanny had discovered that being married to a great heiress had raised his social status; and now he observed the same phenomenon here. Persons who through the years had paid no particular attention to him suddenly recognized that he was a man of brilliant parts; even the Meissner family, whom he had known and loved since he was a small boy, appeared to be seized with awe. Whereas formerly he had shared a bed in Kurt’s small room, he was now lodged in a sumptuous suite in the castle; the retainers and tenants all took off their hats to him, and he no longer had to hear the gräflichen ideas explained second-hand by Herr Meissner, but got them from the horse’s mouth, as the saying is.

It was unfortunate that the ideas no longer impressed him as they did in the earlier years. The General Graf was a typical Junker, active in the Nationalist party; his policies were limited by the interests of his class. He did not let himself be influenced by the fact that his estate was now in Poland; that was a temporary matter, soon to be remedied. He supported a tariff on foodstuffs so that the German people would pay higher prices to landowners. He wanted his coal mined, but he didn’t want to pay the miners enough so that they could buy his food. He wanted steel and chemicals and other products of industry, which required swarms of workers, but he blamed them for trying to have a say as to the conditions of their lives, or indeed whether they should live at all.

II

Fortunately it wasn’t necessary to spend much time discussing politics. There was a great deal of company, with music, dancing, and feasting. If the country products couldn’t be sold at a profit they might as well be eaten at home, so everyone did his best, and it was astounding how they succeeded. Modern ideas of dietetics, like Napoleon, hadn’t penetrated the feudalism of Upper Silesia. It was the same regimen which had startled Lanny as a boy: a preliminary breakfast with Dresdener Christstollen, a sort of bun with raisins inside and sugar on top; then at half-past ten the "fork breakfast," when several kinds of meat were eaten—but without interfering with anybody’s appetite for lunch. An afternoon tea, only it was coffee, and then an enormous dinner of eight or ten courses, served with the utmost formality by footmen in satin uniforms. Finally, after cards, or music and dancing, it was unthinkable that one should go to bed on an empty stomach. That meant six meals a day, and it produced vigorous and sturdy young men, but when they came to middle age they had necks like bulls' and cheeks like pelicans' and eyes almost closed by fat in the lids.

One discovery Lanny made very quickly: this was the life for which his wife had been created. Nobody shouted at her, nobody confused her mind with strange ideas; everybody treated her as a person of distinction, and found her charming, even brilliant. A world in which serenity and poise counted; a world which didn’t have to be changed! The Grafin became a second mother to her, and she was invited to visit so many distinguished families, she might have been carried through the entire winter without spending any of her money. One aspect of the feudal system appeared to be that most of its ruling members were bored on their estates, and eager for visitors, provided they were of proper station. They all had bursting larders, with a host of servants trained to put meals on tables. Do come and enjoy your share!

III

What Lanny really wanted was to spend the time with his boyhood chum. Kurt now lived with his own family in a stone cottage on the outskirts of the village of Stubendorf, all of which belonged to Seine Hochgeboren. Lanny met for the first time Kurt’s gentle and devoted young wife, and three little blond "Aryans" produced according to the Schicklgruber prescription. Irma went along on the first visit as a matter of courtesy, and also of curiosity, for she had heard how this wonderful Komponist had been Beauty Budd’s lover for some eight years; also, she had heard enough about Kurt’s adventures in Paris during the Peace Conference to make him a romantic figure.

Kurt hadn’t changed much in the four years since Lanny had seen him. The war had aged him prematurely, but from then on he seemed to stay the same: a grave and rather silent man, who chose to speak to the world through his art. He worshiped the classic German composers, especially the "three B’s." Each of these had written a few four-hand piano compositions, and in the course of the years others of their works had been arranged in this form, so now there were more than a hundred such available. Lanny had ordered a complete collection from one of the dealers in Berlin; not often can one make a Christmas present which will give so much pleasure to a friend! The two of them wanted to sit right down and not get up even for meals. Irma couldn’t see how it was possible for human fingers to stand the strain of so much pounding; she couldn’t see how human ears could take in so many notes. She had to remind them of an engagement at the Schloss; whereupon Kurt leaped up at once, for Seine Hochgeboren must not be kept waiting, even for Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms.

In return for his pension and his home it was Kurt’s duty to play for his patron, and to assemble, rehearse, and conduct a small orchestra for special occasions such as this Christmas visit. He did this with scrupulous fidelity, as the young Haydn had done for the great Prince Esterhazy of Vienna. It wasn’t an onerous job, for of late years Seine Hochgeboren came only rarely. To his people living under the Poles he made a formal address, full of Christmas cheer, but also of quiet unbending faith that God would somehow restore them to their Fatherland. Deutsche Treue und Ehre acquired a special meaning when used by those living in exile.

That was what the National Socialist movement meant to Kurt Meissner. He and his young wife listened with eager attention while Lanny told about his meeting with Adolf Hitler; then Herr Meissner asked to have the story told to his family, and later on the lord of the Schloss wanted his friends to hear it. They questioned the visitor closely as to just what Adi’s program now was; and of course Lanny knew what was in their minds. Had the Ftihrer of the Nazis really dropped that crazy Socialist stuff with which he had set out on his career? Could he be depended upon as a bulwark against Bolshevism, a terror so real to the people on Germany’s eastern border? Would he let the landowners alone and devote himself to rearming the country, and forcing the Allies to permit the return of Stubendorf and the other lost provinces, the Corridor and the colonies? If the Germans in exile could be sure of these things, they might be willing to support him, or at any rate not oppose him actively.

IV

Kurt had composed a symphony, which he called Das Vaterland. He and his adoring wife had copied out the parts for an orchestra of twenty pieces, and Kurt had engaged musicians from the near-by towns, of course at the Graf’s expense. They had been thoroughly drilled, and now played the new work before a distinguished company on Christmas night. This was the high point of Lanny’s visit, and indeed of his stay in Germany. In his boyhood he had taken Kurt Meissner as his model of all things noble and inspiring; he had predicted for him a shining future, and felt justified when he saw all the hochgeboren Herrschaften of Kurt’s own district assembled to do him honor.

During the composer’s time in Bienvenu his work had been full of bitterness and revolt, but since he had come home he had apparently managed to find courage and hope. He didn’t write program music, and Lanny didn’t ask what the new work was supposed to signify; indeed, he would rather not be told, for the military character of much of the music suggested it was meant for the Nazis. It pictured the coming of a deliverer, it portrayed the German people arising and marching to their world destiny; at its climax, they could no longer keep in march tempo, but broke into dancing; great throngs of them went exulting into the future, endless companies of young men and maidens, of that heroic and patriotic sort that Heinrich Jung and Hugo Behr were training.

The music didn’t actually say that, and every listener was free to make up his own story. Lanny chose to include youths and maidens of all lands in that mighty dancing procession. He remembered how they had felt at Hellerau, in the happy days before the war had poisoned the minds of the peoples. Then internationalism had not been a Schimpfwort, and it had been possible to listen to Schubert’s C-major symphony and imagine a triumphal procession shared by Jews and Russians, by young men and maidens from Asia and even from Africa.

Irma was much impressed by the welcome this music received. She decided that Kurt must be a great man, and that Beauty should be proud of having had such a lover, and of having saved him from a French firing-squad. She decided that it was a distinguished thing to have a private orchestra, and asked her husband if it wouldn’t be fun to have one at Bienvenu. They must be on the lookout for a young genius to promote.

Lanny knew that his wife was casting around in her mind for some sort of career, some way to spend her money that would win his approval as well as that of to point out that this was a difficult thing to do, for it was better to have no salon at all than to have a second-rate one, and the eminent persons who frequent such assemblages expect the hostess not merely to have read their books but to have understood them. It isn’t enough to admire them extravagantly—indeed they rather look down on you unless you can find something wrong with their work.

Now Lanny had to mention that musical geniuses are apt to be erratic, and often it is safer to know them through their works. One cannot advertise for one as for a butler or a chef; and suppose they got drunk, or took up with the parlor-maid? Lanny said that a consecrated artist such as Kurt Meissner would be hard to find. Irma remarked: "I suppose they wouldn’t be anywhere but in Germany, where everybody works so hard!"

V

Among the guests they had met at the Schloss was an uncle of their host, the Graf Oldenburg of Vienna. The Meissners had told them that this bald-headed old Silenus was in financial trouble; he always would be, it having been so planned by the statesmen at Paris, who had cut the Austro-Hungarian Empire into small fragments and left a city of nearly two million people with very little hinterland to support it. The Graf was a gentleman of the old school who had learned to dance to the waltzes of the elder Strauss and was still hearing them in his fancy. He invited Irma and Lanny to visit him, and mentioned tactfully that he had a number of fine paintings. Since it was on their way home, Lanny said: "Let’s stop and have a look."

It was a grand marble palace on the Ringstrasse, and the reception of the American visitors was in good style, even though the staff ot servants had been cut, owing to an outrageous law just passed by the city administration—a graduated tax according to the number of your servants, and twice as high for men as for women! But a Socialist government had to find some way to keep going. Here was a city with great manufacturing power and nowhere to export its goods. All the little states surrounding it had put up tariff barriers and all efforts at a customs union came to naught. Such an agreement with Germany seemed the most obvious thing in the world, but everybody knew that France would take it as an act of war.

An ideal situation from the point of view of a young art expert with American dollars in the bank! The elderly aristocrat, his host, was being hounded by his creditors, and responded promptly when Lanny invited him to put a price on a small-sized Jan van Eyck representing the Queen of Heaven in the very gorgeous robes which she perhaps was now wearing, but had assuredly never seen during her sojourn on earth.

Among Irma’s acquaintances on Long Island was the heiress of a food-packing industry; and since people will eat, even when they do nothing else, Brenda Spratt’s dividends were still coming in. She had appeared fascinated by Lanny’s accounts of old masters in Europe and his dealings in them; so now he sent her a cablegram informing her that she could obtain a unique art treasure in exchange for four hundred and eighty thousand cans of spaghetti with tomato sauce at the wholesale price of three dollars per case of forty-eight cans. Lanny didn’t cable all that, of course—it was merely his way of teasing Irma about the Long Island plutocracy. Next day he had a reply informing him at what bank he could call for the money. A genuine triumph of the soul of man over the body, of the immortal part over the mortal; and incidentally it would provide Lanny Budd with pocket-money for the winter. He invited his wife to state whether her father had ever done a better day’s business at the age of thirty-one.

The over-taxed swells of Vienna came running to meet the American heiress and to tell her brilliant young husband what old masters they had available. Irma might have danced till dawn every night, and Lanny might have made a respectable fortune, transferring culture to the land of his fathers. But what he preferred was meeting Socialist writers and party leaders and hearing their stories of suffering and struggle in this city which was like a head without a body. The workers were overwhelmingly Socialist, while the peasants of the country districts were Catholic and reactionary. To add to the confusion, the Hitlerites were carrying on a tremendous drive, telling the country yokels and the city hooligans that all their troubles were due to Jewish profiteers.

The municipal government, in spite of near-bankruptcy, was going bravely ahead with a program of rehousing and other public services. This was the thing of which Lanny had been dreaming, the socialization of industry by peaceful and orderly methods, and he became excited about it and wished to spend his time traveling about looking at blocks of workers' homes and talking to the people who lived in them. Amiable and well-bred people, going to bed early to save light and fuel, and working hard at the task of making democracy a success. Their earnings were pitifully small, and when Lanny heard stories of infant mortality and child malnutrition and milk prices held up by profiteers, it rather spoiled his enjoyment of stately banquets in mansions with historic names. Irma said: "You won’t let yourself have any fun, so we might as well go on home."

VI

It wasn’t much better at Bienvenu, as the young wife was soon to learn. The world had become bound together with ties invisible but none the less powerful, so that when the price of corn and hogs dropped in Nebraska the price of flowers dropped on the Cap d’Antibes. Lanny explained the phenomenon: the men who speculated in corn and hogs in Chicago no longer gave their wives the money to buy imported perfumes, so the leading industry of the Cap went broke. Leese, who ran Bienvenu, was besieged by nieces and nephews and cousins begging to be taken onto the Budd staff. There was a swarm of them already, twice as many as would have been employed for the same tasks on Long Island; but in the Midi they had learned how to divide the work, and nobody ever died from overexertion. Now there were new ones added, and it was a delicate problem, because it was Irma’s money and she was entitled to have a say. What she said was that servants oughtn’t to be permitted to bother their employers with the hard-luck stories of their relatives. Which meant that Irma still had a lot to learn about life in France!

The tourists didn’t come, and the "season" was slow—so slow that it began to stop before it got started. The hotelkeepers were frightened, the merchants of luxury goods were threatened with ruin, and of course the poor paid for it. Lanny knew, because he went on helping with that Socialist Sunday school, where he heard stories which spoiled his appetite and his enjoyment of music, and troubled his wife because she knew what was in his thoughts—that she oughtn’t to spend money on clothes and parties while so many children weren’t getting enough to eat.

But what could you do about it? You had to pay your servants, or at any rate feed them, and it was demoralizing if you didn’t give them work to do. Moreover, how could you keep up the prices of foods except by buying some? Irma’s father and uncles had fixed it firmly in her mind that the way to make prosperity was to spend; but Lanny seemed to have the idea that you ought to buy cheap foods and give them to the poor. Wouldn’t that demoralize the poor and make parasites of them? Irma thought she saw it happening to a bunch of "comrades" on the Riviera who practically lived on the Budd bounty, and rarely said "Thank you." And besides, what was to become of the people who raised the more expensive foods? Were they going to have to eat them?

Life is a compromise. On Sunday evening Lanny would go down into the Old Town of Cannes and explain the wastes of the competitive system to a group of thirty or forty proletarians: French and Provencal, Ligurian and Corsican, Catalan and even one Algerian. On Monday evening he would take his wife and mother to Sept Chenes and play accompaniments for a singer from the Paris opera at one of Emily’s soirees. On Tuesday he would spend the day helping to get ready for a dinner-dance at Bienvenu, with a colored jazz band, Venetian lanterns with electric lights all over the lawns, and the most fashionable and titled people coming to do honor to the daughter of J. Paramount Barnes. Yes, there were still some who had money and would not fail in their economic duty! People who had seen the storm coming and put their fortune into bonds; people who owned strategic industries, such as the putting up of canned spaghetti for the use of millions who lived in tiny apartments in cities and had never learned how to make tomato sauce!

VII

Robbie Budd came visiting that winter. He had some kind of queer deal on; he was meeting with a former German U-boat commander who had entered the service of a Chinese mandarin, and this latter had been ousted and now wanted Budd machine guns so as to get back. He had got the support of some bankers in French IndoChina, but they didn’t want to buy French munitions, for fear of publicity—a shady affair all round, but Robbie explained with a grin that one had to pick up money where one could these days. No chance to sell any of the products of peace in Europe now!

He told the same stories of hard times which his son had heard in Berlin and Vienna. There were breadlines in all the American cities, and on street corners one saw men, and some women, stamping their feet and holding out apples in their half-frozen hands. The price of apples having slumped, this was a way to get rid of them; a nickel apiece, Mister, and won’t you help a poor guy get a cup of coffee? There was no way to count the unemployed, but everybody agreed that the number was increasing and the situation was terrible. Robbie thanked God for the Great Engineer whom he had helped to elect President; that harassed man was standing firm as a rock, insisting that Congress should balance the budget. If it was done, business would pick up in the end. It always had and always must.

Robbie had paid off one-half of the notes which he had given to Lanny, Beauty, and Marceline as security for the money turned over to him during the Wall Street panic. He had invested a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the three of them in United States government bonds, and now tried to persuade them to shift it to stocks. They discussed the matter for an hour or so, sitting in front of a blazing fire of cypress wood in the drawing-room of the home. Beauty wavered, but Lanny said "No," and said it again and again.

"Look where steel is now!" exclaimed the father.

"But," argued the younger man, "you said exactly the same thing when you were here last time. You were sure it couldn’t go lower."

He took his father on a tour of the civilized world. Where was there a nation that had money to buy American steel? Britain, France, Germany—all could make more than they could market, and the smaller nations were kept going only by the fears of their creditors. Here was Robbie, himself a steel man, reduced to selling to Chinese mandarins and South American revolutionists! Russia wanted steel desperately, but had to learn to make it for herself because she had no foreign exchange and nobody would trust her. "And you talk about steel coming back!" exclaimed the son.

Robbie couldn’t answer, but neither could he change. He knew that Lanny got his ideas out of his Pink and Red papers—which he kept in his own study, so as not to offend the eyesight of his relatives and friends. All these papers had a vested interest in calamity; but they couldn’t be right, for if so, what would become of Robbie’s world? He said: "Have it your way; but mark what I tell you, if only Hoover can hold out against inflationary tendencies, we’ll be seeing such a boom as never was in the world before."

VIII

Lanny returned to the delights of child study. Truly a marvelous thing to watch a tiny organism unfolding, in such perfect order and according to schedule. They had a book which told them what to expect, and it was an event when Baby Frances spoke her first word two full weeks ahead of time, and a still greater thrill when she made her first effort to get up on her feet. All, both friends and servants, agreed that they had never seen a lovelier female infant, and Lanny, with his imaginative temperament, fell to speculating as to what might become of her. She would grow up to be a fine young woman like her mother. Would it be possible to teach her more than her mother knew? Probably not; she would have too much money. Or would she? Was there any chance of a benevolent revolution on the Viennese model, compelling her to do some useful work?

He had the same thought concerning his half-sister, who was ripening early in the warm sunshine of the Midi and in the pleasure-seeking of its fashionable society. Marceline was going to be a beauty like her mother; and how could she fail to know it? From earliest childhood she had been made familiar with beauty-creating and beauty-displaying paraphernalia: beauty lotions, beauty creams, beauty powders and paints, all put up in such beautiful receptacles that you couldn’t bear to throw them away; clothing designed to reveal beauty, mirrors in which it was to be studied, conversation concerning the effects of it upon the male for whom it was created. Self-consciousness, sex-consciousness were the very breath of being of this young creature, paused on tiptoe with excitement, knowing by instinct that she was approaching the critical period of her life. The prim Miss Addington was troubled about her charge, but Beauty, who had been that way herself, took it more easily. Lanny, too, had been precocious at that age, and so could understand her. He would try to teach her wisdom, to moderate her worldly desires. He would talk about her father, endeavoring to make him effective as an influence in her life. The pictures made him a living presence, but unfortunately Marceline did not know him as a poor painter on the Cap, working in a pair of stained corduroy trousers and an old blue cap. She knew him as a man of renommé, a source of income and a subject of speculation; his example confirmed her conviction that beauty and fame were one. To receive the attentions of other persons was what she enjoyed. Important persons, if possible—but anyone was better than no one!

IX

Amid this oddly assorted family Parsifal Dingle went on living his quietist life. He had the firm faith that it was impermissible to argue with people; the only thing was to set an example, and be certain that in due course it would have its effect. He took no part in any controversy, and never offered an opinion unless it was asked for. He sought nothing for himself, because, he said, everything was within him. He went here and there about the place, a friend of the flowers and the birds and the dogs. He read a great deal, and often closed his eyes; you wouldn’t know whether he was praying or asleep. He was kind to everybody, and treated rich and poor the same; the servants revered him, having become certain that he was some kind of saint. His fame spread, and he would be asked to come and heal this person and that. The doctors resented this, and so did the clergy of the vicinity; it was unsanctioned, a grave violation of the proprieties.

At least an hour every day Mr. Dingle spent with Madame Zyszynski, and often Beauty was with him. The spirits possessed the minds of this pair, and the influence of the other world spread through the little community. Beauty began asking the spirits' advice, and taking it in all sorts of matters. They told her that these were dangerous times, and to be careful of her money. The spirit of Marcel told her this, and so did the spirit of the Reverend Blackless—so he referred to himself. Beauty had never taken his advice while he was living, but assumed he would be ultra-wise in the beyond. As economy was what Lanny wanted her to practice, he felt indebted to the shades. Being a talkative person, Beauty told her friends about her "guides," and Bienvenu acquired- a queerer reputation than it had ever had, even when it was a haunt of painters, munitions buyers, and extra-marital couples.

Lanny would try his luck with a seance now and then. The character of his spirit life underwent a change; Marie receded into the background and her place was taken by Marcel and Great-Great-Uncle Eli Budd. These two friends of his boyhood told him much about themselves, and held high converse with each other in the limbo where they dwelt; just so had Lanny imagined them after their death, and it confirmed his idea that he was getting an ingenious reconstruction of the contents of his own mind. Now and then would appear some fact which he hadn’t known before; but he argued that he might have heard it and forgotten it. He had had many intimate talks with both his former relatives, and surely couldn’t remember every detail.

His theory was confirmed by the fact that he received a cordial letter from Mr. Ezra Hackabury, who was trying to keep out of bankruptcy in the town of Reubens, Indiana. Terrible times, he reported; but he hoped people would still have to have kitchen soap. The question was being answered in monthly sales reports, and meanwhile Mr. Hackabury pitched horseshoes behind the barn, as in the old days, and wondered if Lanny had kept up his skill in this art. When Lanny wrote what the spirits had said, the soapman replied that it was with him as it had been with Mark Twain: the report of his death was exaggerated. In the course of a year and a half of intercourse with Tecumseh, Lanny had recorded several cases of the chieftain’s failure to distinguish between the living and the dead, and Lanny drew from this fact the conclusion which satisfied his own mind—at the same time overlooking a number of other facts which didn’t. In this behavior he had the example of many leading men of science.

X

So passed a pleasant period in the well-cushioned limousine in which Lanny Budd was rolling through life. He was unhappy about the sufferings of the world, but not so unhappy that he couldn’t eat the excellent meals which the servants of both the villa and the Cottage prepared; not so unhappy that he couldn’t read the manuscripts which Rick sent him, and the first draft of a Silesian Suite which Kurt submitted. He taught his Pink class, and argued with the young Reds who came to bait him—and at the same time to borrow money when they got into trouble. He spent his own funds, and some of Irma’s, playing patron to the social discontent of the Midi; but Irma didn’t mind especially, because she had the money, and had the instinctive feeling that the more the family was dependent upon-her, the more agreeable they would make themselves. Who eats my bread, he sings my song!

A surprising incident. One afternoon Lanny was in his studio, playing that very grand piano which he had bought for Kurt, but which was beginning to show the effects of a decade of sea air. A sunshiny afternoon of spring; Lanny had the doors and windows open, and was filling the surrounding atmosphere with the strains of Rubinstein’s Waltz Caprice. The telephone rang, for they now had phones in all the buildings on the estate; to Irma it had seemed ridiculous to have to send a servant every time she wished to invite Beauty over to the Cottage for lunch, or when she wanted to tell Lanny to come swimming. Now a servant was calling from the villa, reporting that there was an elderly gentleman who said his name was "Monsieur Jean". Lanny wasn’t usually slow, but this time he had to have the name repeated. Suddenly he remembered the town of Dieppe.

The Knight Commander of the Bath and Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor had held off for the better part of a year, until Lanny had given up the idea of hearing from him. It seemed hard to believe, for Zaharoff was bound to know that he had got something real at that seance—and how could he bear not to get more? At last he had decided to give way, and characteristically he wasn’t taking half-measures; he had come in person, the first time he had ever thus honored the Budd family. He honored very few persons in that manner.

"Monsieur Jean" was alone. He had seated himself on the edge of a straight chair, as if he wasn’t sure that he would be welcomed; he had kept his walking-stick, and was leaning on it with both hands folded over it. The cold blue eyes met Lanny’s. Was Lanny mistaken in thinking that there was an anxious look on the face of the old spider, the old wolf, the old devil? Anyhow, the younger man greeted his caller with cordiality, and the latter said quickly: "For a long time I have known that I owed you an apology."

"Don’t bother about it, Monsieur Jean," said the younger man. He used that name because some servant might overhear. "I realized that you were upset. Several times in these seances I have been told things which didn’t happen to be true, and which would have been embarrassing if there had been others present." Nothing could have been more tactful.

"I should have written to you," continued the other. "But I put it off, thinking you might come to see me."

"I had no way of knowing what your wishes would be." To himself Lanny added: "You were trying other mediums, to see if you could get what you want!"

"I decided that the proper thing to do was to make my apologies in person. I will make them to the medium, if she is still with you."

"She is." Lanny would wait, and make the old man ask for what he wanted.

"Do you suppose it would be possible for me to see her again?"

"You mean, to try another seance?"

"I would esteem it a great favor."

"I can’t answer for her, Monsieur Jean. As I explained at the time, it causes her distress if anything goes wrong. She was very much upset."

"I realize that. I am thoroughly prepared now, and can give you my word that nothing of the sort will happen again. Whatever comes, I will take it, as you Americans say."

"Perhaps," suggested Lanny, "you might prefer to sit with her alone?"

"If she will trust me, that would be better. You may tell her that I will pay her generously."

"I would beg you not to mention that. We have a financial arrangement with her, and her time is ours."

"Surely it would be proper for me to pay a portion of the cost?"

"There is no need to raise the question. The amount is small— and you may not get the results you want."

"If I should get them, and if I might see her now and then, you will surely let me make some financial arrangement?"

"We can talk about that by and by. First, I will see if I can persuade her to give you another sitting."

"You have not told her about me?"

"I haven’t told anybody. You remember I wrote you that that was my intention."

"You have been very kind, Lanny, and I shall never forget it."

XI

It wasn’t an easy matter to persuade Madame Zyszynski. She was still angry with "that rude old gentleman." What he had done to her was unforgivable. But Lanny told her that the rude old gentleman had been extremely unhappy, and something had come from Tecumseh which had broken him down; it had taken him nearly a year to get over it. But now he was penitent, and had given his word, and Lanny felt sure he would keep it. Madame was used to trusting Lanny—she was a lonely old woman, and had adopted him as her son in her imagination. Now she said she would give Monsieur Jean another chance to behave, but first Lanny must explain to him the physical shock which he had caused her, that she had been ill and depressed for days, and so on. Tecumseh would doubtless be extremely angry, and would scold the sitter without the least regard to his dignity.

Lanny dutifully went back and delivered these messages; and the armament king of Europe solemnly agreed to humble his pride before the chieftain of the Iroquois. Lanny said: "I don’t know what he really is, but he acts like a personage, and you have to treat him that way. You have given him offense, and you will have to pretend that you are petitioning for pardon." Lanny said it with a smile, but the Knight Commander and Grand Officer was serious; he replied that if it would get him a message from the source desired he would submit to torture from real Indians.

So Lanny took him down to his studio, and showed him some of Marcel’s paintings on the walls—though he probably didn’t have much mind for art just then. The medium came in, and said: "Bon jour, monsieur" Zaharoff answered: "Bon jour, madame" and they seated themselves in the two chairs which Lanny had moved into place for them. He waited until he saw the woman going into her trance successfully; then he went out, closing the studio door behind him.

Beauty and Irma had been in to Cannes for shopping. They came back; and of course it would no longer be possible to keep the secret from them. No need to, anyhow, for the matter would doubtless be settled this time; the duquesa would "come through," or Zaharoff would give up. Lanny took them into his mother’s room and told them who had attended Madame’s seance in Dieppe. Both the ladies were excited, for Zaharoff was the same kind of royalty as Irma, and sovereigns do not often meet their social equals. "Oh, do you think he’ll stay for dinner?" inquired Beauty.

Anyhow, the ladies would dress; but not too much, for Monsieur Jean wouldn’t be dressed. Lanny explained the reason for the name. Then he walked up and down on the loggia in front of the villa, watching the sun set behind the dark mountains across the Golfe Juan. Many times he had watched it, as far back as his memory went. He had seen war come, and vessels burning and sinking in that blue expanse of water. He had watched the tangled fates of human beings woven on these grounds; love and hate, jealousy and greed, suffering and fear; he had seen people dancing, laughing and chatting, and more than once crying. Marcel had sat here with his burned-off face, meeting his friends in the protecting darkness. Here, too, Kurt had played his music, Rick had outlined his plays, and Robbie had negotiated big munitions- deals. Now Lanny walked, waiting to hear if the spirit of a noble Spanish lady was going to speak to her Greek husband through the personality of an American redskin, dead a couple of centuries and using the vocal cords of a Polish peasant woman who had been a servant in the home of a Warsaw merchant. One thing you could say about life, it provided you with variety!

XII

The old man came up from the studio alone, walking with his head thrust forward, as he always did, as if smelling his way. Lanny went to meet him, and he said, with unwonted intensity: "My boy, this is really a disturbing thing!"

"You got some results?"

"I got what certainly seemed results. Tell me, are you convinced of this woman’s honesty?"

"We are all convinced of that."

"How long have you known her?"

"For some eighteen months."

"You think she is really in a trance when she pretends to be?"

"She would have to be a skilled actress if that were not true; we have watched her closely, and we don’t think she is intelligent enough to fool us."

"You are sure she doesn’t know who I am?"

"I can’t imagine how she could have found out. No one but my father knew about the matter, and you know that my father is not a loose talker. When you wrote me the appointment, I took the precaution to tear up your letter and throw it into the sea."

"Lanny, it was just as if my wife was sitting in the next room, sending me messages. You can understand how important this is to me."

"It is important to all of us, for we all get communications like that."

"She reminded me of things from my childhood, and from hers; things we both knew but which nobody else knows—at least, not that I can think of."

They went inside, for it grows chilly on the Riviera the moment the sun is down. The old man wanted to know all that Lanny thought about these phenomena, the most mysterious which confront the modern thinker. When Lanny told him of the books of Geley and Osty, Zaharoff took out his notebook and jotted down the names; also the two great volumes of Pierre Janet—he promised to study them all. His education had been neglected, but now he would try to find out about the subconscious mind and its powers, so different from those of a munitions king! He had missed a great deal, and was only beginning to be aware of it when life was ebbing.

The ladies came in: two most elegant ladies, about whom he had heard; concerning Irma nothing but good. He was extraordinarily courteous; he hoped for a favor from them, and asked it as a humble petitioner: would they graciously permit Madame Zyszynski to visit him in Monte Carlo if he would send his car for her and send her back? Beauty said: "Why, certainly. That is, of course, if Madame is willing, and I am sure she will be."

"We got along all right this time," said Zaharoff. And Lanny, not untrained in observation, perceived that the old spider, likewise not untrained, was watching for some hint of the fact that Beauty knew of the earlier fiasco. Since Beauty didn’t know what had happened on that occasion, it was easy for her to appear innocent. Not that >t would have been difficult, anyhow!

Lanny went down to the studio for the purpose of consulting Madame and found her pleased with the old gentleman’s new humility. She said she would be willing to visit his hotel, and Lanny went back and made a date. Zaharoff excused himself from dinner, saying that he ate very little and that his mind was full of the things he had heard.

He went out to his car and was driven away. Beauty said to Irma: "That poor old man! He has so much money, yet he can’t get the one thing in the world he wants!" After saying it, the mother-in-law wondered if it mightn’t sound a wee bit tactless!

I

IRMA had promised her mother to visit Long Island that summer and exhibit the new heiress of the Barnes and Vandringham clans. Johannes Robin had said that they would make it another yachting-trip, but now he wrote sorrowfully that it was impossible for him to leave Berlin; financial conditions were becoming desperate, and he would have to be on hand every day and perhaps every hour. With a princely gesture he offered the Budd family the yacht with all expenses paid, but perhaps he knew that they would not accept such a favor.

Irma said: "We might rent it from him." They talked about the idea for a while, but they knew the young Robins wouldn’t come, they would feel it their duty to stick by their mother and father. Freddi would prefer to carry on the school, for workers don’t have vacations—when they stop work, their pay stops, and this was happening to great numbers of them. Hansi and Bess were helping by playing at low-priced concerts in large halls for the people. A violinist doesn’t promote his reputation by that kind of thing, but he helps his conscience.

There were plenty of persons who would have been pleased to be offered a free yachting-trip, but Irma admitted that it might be a bore to be with a small group for so long a time; better to be footloose, and free to change friends as well as places. The efficient Bureau International de Voyage, which now consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Jerry Pendleton and nobody else, was happy to supply them with information concerning steamers from Marseille to New York. There were sumptuous Mediterranean cruises on which one could book for the return trip; there were steamers making so-called de luxe tours around the world, coming by way of the Suez Canal and Gibraltar to New York. De luxe was what Irma Barnes desired, and it was pleasant to learn that the choicest suites of these floating hotels were vacant on account of hard times. Irma chose the best for herself and Lanny, and a near-by one for Miss Severne, the nursemaid, and the baby; also a second-class passage for her maid, and for the demoted Feathers, whose duty it now was to run all the errands and accept all humiliations.

Early in May the party embarked, and Lanny found himself returned suddenly into that cafe society from which he had fled a year and a half ago. Ten to twelve million dollars had been expended to provide a sea-going replica of the Great White Way, and by expertly contrived advertising exactly the right sort of crowd had been lured on board. This floating hotel included a swimming-pool deep enough for high diving, a game room, a gymnasium with instructors, a squash court, a playground for children, an arcade with beauty parlors and luxury shops, several bars and barber-shops used mainly by ladies, a jazz band and a small orchestra, a motion-picture theater, and a grill room where you could order anything you wanted if you became hungry in between the elaborate regular meals. Here were people one had met at first nights on Broadway, in the swanky night clubs and the Park Avenue penthouses. A sprinkling of sight-seers and curiosity-seekers from the "sticks," which meant any place west of Seventh Avenue; people who had "made their pile" in hogs or copper and put it into bonds, and wished to get away from the troubles of their world. They had expected the depression to be over by the time they got back, but they had miscalculated.

Before the vessel docked at Marseille word had got about that Irma Barnes and her husband were coming on board; so there was a crowd lined up by the rail to spot them and watch them. Once upon a time it had been rude to stare, but that time was gone with the daisies. Several old friends rushed up to greet Irma, and to be introduced to the lucky young prince consort; so right away the pair were plunged into the midst of events: supper parties, bridge parties, dancing, sports of one sort or another. So much gossip to hear and to impart, so many new people to meet and play with! Everybody’s cabin was loaded with souvenirs; everybody had stories of places visited. But on the whole it had been rather a bore, you know; they would be glad to get back home, where you could play golf and ride and motor, and get rid of the people who bored you.

II

Living under the feudal system, Irma had found herself impressed by the idea of being exclusive; but here she was back in the easygoing world which was much less trouble and much more fun. All sorts of people wanted to know her, and how was she to find out who they were or what they wanted? It might be an expert thief, trying to find out what jewels she wore and where she kept them; it might be a blackmailer on the watch for something he could put to use; there was a good chance of its being a cardsharp, for swarms of them preyed upon the passengers of ocean liners. Irma and a New York acquaintance played against a couple of ladies with manners and costumes beyond criticism; quite probably the pair had some means of signaling other than the bids which were a part of the game and which everybody studied and argued about. They proposed a dollar a point for stakes, and Irma didn’t mind; she didn’t mind especially when she found that her side was a couple of thousand dollars in the hole at the end of an afternoon. Her partner broke down and wept, saying she didn’t have the money, so Irma paid for both, and didn’t like it when Lanny insisted that all three women were probably in cahoots.

Also there was the question of liquor. The young people were drinking all the time, and how they managed to carry it was a problem. Lanny said: "Why not choose some friends who know something to talk about?" But those were older persons, and Irma could only listen. Presently along would come some of her own set and carry her off to a gaily decorated bar; or they would order drinks while they were playing shuffleboard on deck. Lanny could no longer say: "You have the health of our baby to think of." He was put in the unpleasant position of the sober man at a feast; he was a wet blanket, a sorehead, a grouch. Irma didn’t say these things, but others said them behind her back, and looked them; you had either to play the game or antagonize people. Lanny decided that he would be glad when his wife was under the sheltering wing of Fanny Barnes, who had the right to scold her daughter and exercised it.

Among the conveniences on board this movable city was a broker’s office where you could get quotations and gamble in your favorite stocks; also a daily newspaper which reported what was happening in Wall Street and the rest of the world. Shortly before the vessel reached New York it was learned that the troubles in Vienna had come to a climax; there was a failure of the Creditanstalt, biggest bank in the city. Next day the panic was spreading to Germany. Lanny heard people say: "All right. It’s time they had some troubles." But others understood that if Germany couldn’t pay reparations, Britain and France would soon be unable to pay their debts to the United States. These financial difficulties traveled like waves of sound; they met some obstruction and came rolling back. The world had become a vast sounding-board, filled with clashing echoes hurled this way and that. Impossible to guess what was coming next!

III

The Statue of Liberty stood, erect and dignified, holding her torch immovable; in bright sunlight she appeared quite sober. Lanny wondered: was she "on the wagon," or did she, like so many of his acquaintances in cafe society, never get drunk until night? It was still the time of Prohibition, and you couldn’t buy anything on the ship after she had passed the three-mile limit; but everybody knew that as soon as you stepped ashore you could get whatever you wanted.

Fanny Barnes, accompanied by her brother Horace, was waiting on the pier for the first sight of the most precious of all babies. When gangplanks were lowered and the family procession came down, she took the soft warm bundle in her arms, and Lanny saw the first tears he had ever seen in what he had thought were hard, worldly eyes. She refused to put the bundle down, but carried it off to the waiting car and sat there, breaking every rule which Miss Severne had laid down for the hygienic and psychological protection of infants. Lanny saw the Englishwoman watching with disapproval; he feared that a first-class row was pending, for the head nurse had explained many times that she was a professional person and considered that her services were superfluous if her advice was disregarded.

They left Feathers to attend to the customs formalities and to bring Irma’s maid and the nursemaid and the bags in another car. The family drove away in state, with Miss Severne in front with the chauffeur, so that she wouldn’t be so aware of a grandmother coddling and cuddling a fourteen-month-old child, poking a finger at her and talking nonsense. That went on all the way across Fourteenth Street, and through the slums of New York’s East Side, over a great bridge, and on the new speedway. Lanny recognized what a serious action he had committed in keeping the precious creature in Europe—and what a fight he was going to have to get her back there!

Plenty of news to talk about: family affairs, business affairs, and all their friends who had got married, or died, or been born. Presently Uncle Horace Vandringham was telling Lanny about stocks. They were down again—very bad news from Germany, and rumors that the trouble might spread to Britain. The one-time market manipulator gave it as his opinion that prices had just about reached bottom; the very same words that Robbie Budd had said: "Look where steel is now!" Uncle Horace had written Irma, begging her to put up a little money, so that he might get back into the game; he would go fifty-fifty with her—it was a crime to waste the expert knowledge which he had spent a lifetime in acquiring. Irma had said no, and had told her husband that she would continue to say it and not let herself be bothered with importunities.

IV

Life at Shore Acres was taken up where it had been left off. The question of Baby Frances was settled quickly, for the head nurse came to Irma, who had employed her; she didn’t say that Irma had been raised wrong, or that grandmothers were passees, but simply that modern science had made new discoveries and that she had been trained to put them into practice. Irma couldn’t dream of losing that most conscientious of persons, so she laid down the law to her mother, who took it with surprising meekness. Likewise, Uncle Horace made only the feeblest of tentatives in the direction of Wall Street. Lanny perceived that they had had family consultations; the haughty Fanny was going to be the ideal mother-in-law, her brother was going to make himself agreeable at all costs, and everybody in the house was to do the same—in the hope that a prince consort might be persuaded to settle down in his palace and enjoy that state of life to which it had pleased God to call him.

All that Lanny and his royal spouse had to do was to be happy, and they had the most expensive toys in the world to play with. The estate had been created for that purpose, and thousands of skilled workers had applied their labor and hundreds of technicians had applied their brains to its perfection. If the young couple wanted to ride there were horses, if they wanted to drive there were cars, if they wanted to go out on the water there were sailboats and launches. There were two swimming-pools, one indoors and one out, besides the whole Atlantic Ocean. There were servants to wait upon them and clean up after them; there were pensioners and courtiers to flatter and entertain them. The world had been so contrived that it was extremely difficult for the pair to do any sort of useful thing.

Playmates came in swarms: boys and girls of Irma’s set who were "lousy with money"—their own phrase. Irma had romped and danced with them from childhood, and now they were in their twenties, but lived and felt and thought as if still in their teens. The depression had hit many of them, and a few had had to drop out, but most were still keeping up the pace. They drove fast cars, and thought nothing of dining in one place and dancing fifty miles away; they would come racing home at dawn—one of them would be assigned to drive and would make it a point of honor not to get drunk. The boys had been to college and the girls to finishing-schools, where they had acquired fashionable manners, but no ideas that troubled them. Their conversation was that of a secret society: they had their own slang and private jokes, so that if you didn’t "belong," you had to ask what they were talking about.

It was evident to all that Irma had picked up an odd fish, but they were willing enough to adopt him; all he had to do was to take them as they were, do what they did, and not try to force any ideas upon them. He found it interesting for a while; the country was at its springtime best, the estates of Long Island were elaborate and some of them elegant, and anybody who is young and healthy enjoys tennis and swimming and eating good food. But Lanny would pick up the newspaper and read about troubles all over the world; he would go into the swarming city where millions had no chance to play and not even enough to eat; he would look at the apple-sellers, and the breadlines of haggard, fear-driven men—many with clothes still retaining traces of decency. Millions wandering over the land seeking in vain for work; families being driven from their farms because they couldn’t pay the taxes. Lanny wasn’t content to read the regular newspapers, but had to seek out the Pink and Red ones, and then tell his wealthy friends what he had found there. Not many would believe him, and not one had any idea what to do about it.

Nobody seemed to have such ideas. The ruling classes of the various nations watched the breakdown of their economy like spectators in the neighborhood of a volcano, seeing fiery lava pour out of the crater and dense clouds of ashes roll down the slopes, engulfing vineyards and fields and cottages. So it had been when the younger Pliny had stood near Mt. Vesuvius some nineteen hundred years back, and had written to the historian Tacitus about his experience:

"I looked behind me; gross darkness pressed upon our rear, and came rolling over the land after us like a torrent. We had scarce sat down, when darkness overspread us, not like that of a moonless or cloudy night, but of a room when it is shut up, and the lamp put out. You could hear the shrieks of women, the crying of children, and the shouts of men; some were seeking their children, others their parents, others their wives or husbands, and only distinguishing them by their voices; one lamenting his own fate, another that of his family; some praying to die, from the very fear of dying; many lifting their hands to the gods; but the great part imagining that there were no gods left anywhere, and that the last and eternal night was come upon the world."

V

By way of the automobile ferry from Long Island to New London, Connecticut, Lanny drove his wife to his father’s home, and they spent a week with the family. The town of Newcastle had been hard hit by the depression: the arms plant was shut down entirely; the hardware and elevator and other plants were running only three days a week. The workers were living on their savings if they had any; they were mortgaging their homes, and losing their cars and radio sets because they couldn’t meet installment payments. There were a couple of thousand families entirely destitute, and most of them were Budd workers, so it was a strain upon the consciences and pocketbooks of all members of the ruling family. Esther was working harder than even during the World War; she was chairman of the finance committee of the town’s soup kitchens and children’s aid, and went about among the women’s clubs and churches telling harrowing stories and making the women weep, so that private charity might not break down entirely.

That was a crucial issue, as her husband told her. If America was forced to adopt the British system of the dole, it would be the end of individual initiative and private enterprise. Robbie seemed to his son like the anchor-man of a tug-of-war team, his heels dug into the ground, his teeth set, the veins standing out purple in his forehead with the effort he was making to keep his country from moving the wrong way. Robbie had been down to Washington to see President Hoover, his hero and the captain of his team. The Great Engineer was literally besieged; all the forces of disorder and destruction—so he considered them and so did Robbie—were trying to pry him from his stand that the budget must be balanced, the value of the dollar maintained, and business allowed to "come back" in due and regular course.

The cities and the counties, nearing the end of their resources, were clamoring for Federal aid; the returned soldiers had organized to demand a bonus for the services they had rendered overseas while the business men at home were filling their pocketbooks. So the agitators charged, frothing at the mouth, and they had forced their bill through Congress over the President’s veto. Poor Herbert went on making speeches about the American system of "rugged individualism"; it was heartening to him to have a solid business man, one who had been an oil man like himself, come in and tell him that he was saving civilization.

Esther, of course, had to believe her husband; she told all the club ladies and church ladies that they were saving civilization, and they put in their dimes or their dollars, and gathered together and knitted sweaters or cooked and served hot soup. But every slump in Wall Street threw more men out of work in Newcastle, and the ladies were at their wit’s end. When Irma wrote a check for five thousand dollars for the children, tears of gratitude ran down the cheeks of Lanny’s stepmother. He had given her great sorrow in years past, but now his credit rating was triple-A. Even his Pinkness had been made respectable by the crimson hues of Bess, concerning whom the mother inquired with deepest anxiety.

The Newcastle Country Club was giving a costume dance for charity. You paid twenty-five dollars for a ticket, and if you weren’t there you were nobody. Irma and Lanny had to drive to a near-by city, since everybody who knew how to sew in Newcastle was already at work on costumes. But it was all right, for that city likewise had its smokeless factory chimneys. Several women worked day and night, and as a result the visiting pair appeared as a very grand Beatrice and Benedick in red-and-purple velvet with gold linings. A delightful occasion, and when it was over, Irma and Lanny presented the costumes to the country club’s dramatics committee, for Irma said that if you folded them and carried them in the car they’d be full of creases and not fit to use again.

VI

Not much fun visiting a factory town in times like these. But it was the Budd town, and in prosperous days everybody had been cordial to the young couple and their friends, even the Jewish ones. So now it was necessary to stay, and give sympathy and a little help, and have receptions held in their honor, and shake hands and chat with innumerable Budds—not even Lanny could remember them all, and had to "bone up" as if it were for a college examination. Also they played golf and tennis at the country club, and swam and went sailing in delightful June weather. The countryside put on a show of wild roses, and all nature told them not to worry too much, that life was going on.

Also they had to pay a visit to the president of Budd Gunmakers. The old man had told Lanny that he would probably never see him again; but here he was, still holding on, still running the company by telephone. His hands shook so that it was painful to watch; his cheeks hung in flaps so that he seemed to have twice as much yellow skin as was needed to cover his shrinking form; but he was the same grim Puritan, and still questioned Lanny to make sure he had not forgotten his Bible texts. He had heard about Baby Frances, of course, and said he had carried out his promise to put her in his will, though he didn’t know if he really had any property any more, or if Budd stocks would be worth the paper. He pinned the pair down on whether they were going to have another try for a son, and Irma told him they were leaving it to the Lord; this wasn’t so, but Lanny didn’t contradict her, and afterward she said it would have been a shame to worry that old man so close to the grave.

Everybody knew that he couldn’t hold on much longer, and there was an underground war going on for control of the company; a painful struggle between Robbie and his oldest brother Lawford, that silent, morose man who was in charge of production, and whom Lanny and Irma saw only when they attended the First Congregational Church. The old grandfather had not said whom he wished to have succeed him, and of course nobody liked to ask him. For some time Lawford had been seeking out the directors and presenting his side of the case, which involved telling them of the blunders which Robbie had committed—or what Lawford considered blunders. Naturally, this made it necessary for Robbie to defend himself, and it was an ugly situation. Robbie thought he had the whip hand so far. His father had renewed his contract as European sales representative for another five years, so if Lawford got the presidency they’d have to pay a pretty price to buy Robbie out.

VII

The business situation in Germany went from bad to worse. Robbie received a letter from Johannes, saying that it looked like the end of everything. Foreign loans were no more, and Germany couldn’t go on without them. Johannes was taking more money out of the country, and asking Robbie’s help in investing it. Robbie told his son in strict confidence—not even Irma was allowed to know —that President Hoover had prepared a declaration of a moratorium on international debts; he was still hesitating about this grave step; would it help or would it cause more alarm? The French, who had not been consulted, would probably be furious.

The declaration was issued soon after the young couple had returned to Shore Acres, and the French were furious, but the Germans were not much helped. In the middle of July the great Danat Bank failed in Berlin, and there was terror such as Lanny had witnessed in New York. Chancellor Briining went to Paris to beg for help, and Premier Laval refused it; France was now the strongest European power financially, and was sitting on her heap of gold, lending it only for the arming of Poland and her other eastern allies —which were blackmailing her without mercy. Britain had made the mistake of trying to buttress German finances, and now her own were shaky as a result. "We’re not that sort of fools," wrote young Denis de Bruyne to Lanny, who replied: "If you let the German Republic fall and you get Hitler, will that help you?" Young Denis did not reply.

Such were the problems faced by the statesmen while two darlings of fortune were having fun all over the northeastern states. Invitations would come, and they would order their bags packed, step into their car in the morning, drive several hours or perhaps all day, and step out onto an estate in Bar Harbor or Newport, the Berkshires or the Ramapo Hills, the Adirondacks or the Thousand Islands. Wherever it was, there would be a palace—even though it was called a "cottage" or a "camp." The way you knew a "camp" was that it was built of "slabs," and you wore sport clothes and didn’t dress for dinner; but the meal would be just as elaborate, for nobody stayed anywhere without sending a staff of servants ahead and having all modern conveniences, including a dependable bootlegger. Radios and phonographs provided music for dancing, and if you didn’t have the right number for games, you called people on the long-distance telephone and they motored a hundred miles or more, and when they arrived they bragged about their speed. Once more Lanny thought of the English poet Clough, and his song attributed to the devil in one of his many incarnations: "How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho! How pleasant it is to have money!"

These young people still had it, though the streams were drying up. The worst of the embarrassments of a depression, as it presented itself to the daughter of J. Paramount Barnes, was that so many of her friends kept getting into trouble and telling her about it. A truly excruciating situation: in the midst of a bridge game at Tuxedo Park the hostess received a telephone call from her broker in New York, and came in white-faced, saying that unless she could raise fifty thousand dollars in cash by next morning she was "sunk." Not everybody had that much money in the bank, and especially not in times when rumors were spreading about this bank and that. Irma saw the eyes of the hostess fixed upon her, and was most uncomfortable, because she couldn’t remedy the depression all by herself and had to draw the line somewhere.

Yes, it wasn’t all fun having so much money. You didn’t want to shut yourself up in yourself and become hard-hearted and indifferent to others' suffering; but you found yourself surrounded by people who wanted what you had and didn’t always deserve it, people who had never learned to do anything useful and who found themselves helpless as children in a crisis. Of course they ought to go to work, but what could they do? All the jobs appeared to be filled by persons who knew how to do them; right now there were said to be six, or eight, or ten million people looking for jobs and not finding any. Moreover, Lanny and Irma didn’t seem to be exactly the right persons to be giving that sort of advice!

VIII

The first of July was a time for dividends, and many of the biggest and most important corporations "passed" them. This gave a shock to Wall Street, and to those who lived by it; Irma’s income was cut still more, and the shrinkage seemed likely to continue. The news from abroad was as bad as possible. Rick, who knew what was going on behind the scenes, wrote it to his friend. The German Chancellor was in London, begging for funds, but nobody dared help him any further; France was obdurate, because the Germans had committed the crime of attempting to set up a customs union with Austria. But how could either of these countries survive if they couldn’t trade?

All Lanny’s life it had been his habit to sit and listen to older people talking about the state of the world. Now he knew more about it than most of the people he met, even the older ones. While Irma played bridge, or table tennis with her young friends who had acquired amazing skill at that fast game, Lanny would be telling the president of one of the great Wall Street banks just why he had blundered in advising his clients to purchase the bonds of Fascist Italy, or trying to convince one of the richest old ladies of America that she wasn’t really helping to fight Bolshevism when she gave money for the activities of the Nazis in the United States. Such a charming, cultivated young German had been introduced to her, and had explained this holy crusade to preserve Western civilization from the menace of Asiatic barbarism!

It was a highly complicated world for a devout Episcopalian and member of the D.A.R. to be groping about in. A great banking fortune gave her enormous power, and she desired earnestly to use it wisely. Lanny told her the various radical planks of the Nazi program, and the old lady was struck with dismay. He told her how Hitler had been dropping these planks one by one, and she took heart again. But he assured her that Hitler didn’t mean the dropping any more than he had meant the planks; what he wanted was to get power, and then he would do whatever was necessary to keep it and increase it. Lanny found it impossible to make this attitude real to gentle, well-bred, conscientious American ladies; it was just too awful. When you persisted in talking about it, you only succeeded in persuading them that there must be something wrong with your cynical self.

IX

Lanny just couldn’t live with these overstuffed classes all the time; he became homesick for his Reds and Pinks, and went into the hot, teeming city and paid another visit to the Rand School of Social Science. He told them what he had been doing for workers' education on the Riviera, and made a contribution to their expenses. The word spread quickly that here was the bearer of a Fortunatus purse, and everybody who had a cause—there appeared to be hundreds of them—began writing him letters or sending him mimeographed or printed appeals for funds. The world was so full of troubles, and there were so few who cared!

Also he sent in a subscription to the New Leader, and got a weekly dose of the horrors of the capitalist system, which had developed such marvelous powers of production and was unable to use them; which left millions to starve while a few parasites fattened themselves in luxury. This paper would lie on the table in his room, and Irma would see the prominent headlines and say: "Oh, dear! Are you still reading that stuff?" It irritated her to be referred to as a parasite and to have Lanny say: "But that’s what we are," and go on to prove it.

Several of the workers' groups and labor unions had summer camps where their members could spend a vacation. Lanny went to have a look at one of them, having the idea that he ought to know the workers at first hand. But he made the mistake of taking his wife along, which spoiled matters. Irma did her best, but she didn’t know how to unbend. The place was crowded, and mostly they were Jews; their dress was informal and their manners hearty; they were having a good time in their own way, and didn’t mind if it was different from her way; they didn’t look up to royalty, and didn’t enjoy being looked at as a zoo. In short, as an effort to bridge the social chasm the visit was a flop.

On the same South Shore of Long Island with the Barnes estate is the resort known as Coney Island. Lanny had heard about it but had never seen it, and Irma had only vague memories from a time in childhood when her father had taken her. On a hot Sunday afternoon the perverse idea occurred to one of their smart crowd: "Let’s go and see Coney!" It really was a spectacle, they insisted; the world’s premier slumming-tour—unless you went to Shanghai or Bombay on one of those de luxe cruises.

Two motor-carloads of them drove to the resort, which is a long spit of land. It was hard to find a place to park, and they had to walk a couple of miles; but they were young, and were out for fun. There must have been a million people at the resort, and most of them crowded onto the wide stretch of beach; it was barely possible to move about for the swarms of people lying or sitting in the sand, sweltering in the blazing sunshine. If you wanted to know the elementary facts about the human animal, here was the place to see exactly how fat they were, or how skinny, how hairy, how bow-legged, how stoop-shouldered, how generally different from the standards established by Praxiteles. You could discover also how they stank, what raucous noises they made, what a variety of ill— odored foods they ate, and how utterly graceless and superfluous they were.

To the fastidious Lanny Budd the worst thing of all was their emptiness of mind. They had come for a holiday, and wanted to be entertained, and there was a seemingly endless avenue of devices contrived for the purpose. For prices from a dime up you could be lifted on huge revolving wheels, or whirled around sitting on brightly painted giraffes and zebras; you could ride in tiny cars which bumped into one another, you could walk in dark tunnels which were a perpetual earthquake, or in bright ones where sudden breezes whipped up the women’s skirts and made them scream; you could be frightened by ghosts and monsters—in short, you could have a thousand fantastic things done to you, all expressive of the fact that you were an animal and not a being with a mind; you could be humiliated and made ridiculous, but rarely indeed on Coney Island could you be uplifted or inspired or taught any useful thing. Lanny took this nightmare place as an embodiment of all the degradations which capitalism inflicted upon the swarming millions of its victims. Anything to keep them from thinking.

Thus a young Pink; and he got himself into a red-hot argument with a carload of his young companions, who had drawn their own conclusions from this immersion in carnality. Irma, who monopolized a half-mile of ocean front, was disgusted that anyone should be content to squat upon ten or a dozen square feet of it. Her childhood playmate, Babs Lorimer, whose father had once had a "corner" in wheat, drew political conclusions from the spectacle and wondered how anybody could conceive of the masses' having anything to say about the running of government. "Noodles" Winthrop—his name was Newton—whose widowed mother collected a small fraction of a cent from everyone who rode to Coney Island on a street railway, looked at the problem biologically, and said he couldn’t imagine how such hordes of ugly creatures had survived, or why they desired to. Yet look at the babies they had!

X

With the members of Irma’s immediate family Lanny found that he was getting along surprisingly well. The domineering Fanny Barnes was set in her opinions, but for the most part these had to do with questions of manners and taste and family position; she didn’t give much thought to politics and economics. Pride was her leading motive; she lived in the faith that her Protestant Episcopal God had assigned to her family a specially precious strain of blood. She had the firm conviction that bearers of this blood couldn’t do anything seriously wrong, and she found ways to persuade herself that they hadn’t. She had made up her mind to make the best of this son-in-law whom fate had assigned to her, and presently she was finding excuses for him. Did someone call him a Socialist? Well, he had been reared in Europe, where such ideas didn’t mean what they did in America. Hadn’t some distinguished Englishman —Fanny couldn’t recall who it was—declared: "We are all Socialists now"?

For Lanny as a prince consort there was really quite a lot to be said. His manners were distinguished and his conversation even more so. He didn’t get drunk, and he had to be urged to spend his wife’s money. The uncertainty about his mother’s marriage ceremony hadn’t broken into the newspapers, and he was received by his father’s very old family. So the large and majestic Queen Mother of Shore Acres set out to butter him with flattery and get from him the two things she ardently desired: first, that he should help Irma to produce a grandson to be named Vandringham; and second, that they should leave Baby Frances at Shore Acres to be reared in the Vandringham tradition.

Uncle Horace, that pachyderm of a man who moved with such astonishing energy, proved to be an equally complaisant relative. He had a sense of humor, with more than a trace of mischief in it. He was amused to hear Lanny "razz" the American plutocracy, and especially those representatives of it who came to the Barnes estate. The fact that he himself had been knocked down and out had diminished his admiration for the system and increased his pleasure in seeing others "get theirs." He chuckled at Lanny’s Pinkish jokes, and took the role of an elderly courtier "playing up" to a newly crowned king. Did he hope that Lanny might some day persuade Irma to let him have another fling in the market? Or was he merely making sure of holding onto the comfortable pension which she allowed him? Anyhow, he was good company.

XI

The echoes of calamity came rolling from Germany to England. Trade was falling off, factories closing, unemployment increasing; doubts were spreading as to the soundness of the pound sterling, for a century the standard of value for all the world; investors were taking refuge in the dollar, the Dutch florin, the Swiss franc. Rick told about the situation in his country; boldness was needed, he said—a capital levy, a move to socialize credit; but no political party had the courage or the vision. The Tories clamored to balance the budget at any cost, to cut the dole, and the pay of the schoolteachers, even of the navy. It was the same story as Hoover with his "rugged individualism." Anything to save the gold standard and the power of the creditor class.

At the beginning of September the labor government fell. An amazing series of events—the labor Prime Minister, Ramsay Mac-Donald, and several of his colleagues in the old Cabinet went over to the Tories and formed what he called a "National" government to carry out the anti-labor program. It had happened before in Socialist history, but never quite so dramatically, so openly; Rick, writing about it for one of the leftist papers, said that those who betrayed the hopes of the toiling masses usually managed to veil their sell-out with decorous phrases, they didn’t come out on the public highway to strip themselves of their old work-clothes and put on the livery of their masters.

Rick was a philosopher, and tried to understand the actions of men. He said that the ruling classes couldn’t supply their own quota of ability, but were forced continually to invade the other classes for brains. It had become the function of the Socialist movement to train and equip lightning-change artists of politics, men who understood the workers and how to fool them with glittering promises and then climb to power upon their shoulders. In Italy it had been Mussolini, who had learned his trade editing the principal Socialist paper of the country. In France no fewer than four premiers had begun their careers as ardent revolutionaries; the newest of them was Pierre Laval, an innkeeper’s son who had driven a one-horse omnibus for his father, and while driving had read Socialist literature and learned how to get himself elected mayor of his town.

For what had these men sold out their party and their cause? For cash? That played a part, of course; a premier or prime minister got considerably more than a Socialist editor, and learned to live on a more generous scale. But more important yet was power: the opportunity to expand the personality, to impress the world, to be pictured and reported in the newspapers, to hold the reins and guide the national omnibus. A thousand flatterers gather round the statesman, to persuade him that he is indispensable to the country’s welfare, that danger lies just ahead, and that he alone can ride in the whirlwind and direct the storm.

Rick sent his friend a bunch of clippings, showing how the man who had once lost his seat in the House of Commons for his convictions had now become the hero and darling of those who had unseated him. The entire capitalist press had rallied behind him, praising his action as the greatest of public services. "He will find that he is their prisoner," wrote Rick. "He can do nothing but what they permit; he can have no career except by serving them."

Rick mailed this letter; but before the steamer reached New York, the cables brought word that the prisoner of the Tories had failed. Britain was off the gold standard, and the pound sterling had lost about twenty per cent of its value! It happened to be the twenty-first of September, a notable day in Wall Street history, for it marked two years from the high point of the big bull market. In those two years American securities had lost sixty per cent of their value; and now came this staggering news, causing another drop! "Look where steel is now!" said Lanny Budd to his father over the telephone.

XII

In the midst of this world chaos Pierre Laval, innkeeper’s son, paid a visit to Germany to see what could be done for that frantic government. The boy driver had grown up into a short, stocky man with black hair always awry, with somber, rather piratical features and a thick black mustache. He had made a lot of money, a tremendous aid to a political career. Of his Socialist days he kept one souvenir: he always wore the little four-in-hand wash ties which had been the fashion in his youth, and had been cheap because he could wash them himself. In France it was well for a statesman to retain some proletarian eccentricity; that he sold out his convictions mattered less, for the people had become so cynical about public men that they hoped only to find the least dishonest.

With Laval traveled Aristide Briand, his Foreign Minister, another innkeeper’s son and another Socialist who had changed his mind. He had been a member of twenty-one cabinets—which had required not a little flexibility. But he had labored with genuine conviction to make peace between France and Germany. Now he was an old man, bowed and gray; the glorious organ voice was broken and the strong heart was soon to break. He was still pleading for peace, but he was the prisoner of Laval; and anyhow it was too late. Ancient hatreds and fears had prevailed, and now Germany was in a desperate plight, and France in a worse one, but couldn’t realize it.

A curious whim of history: Briand meeting with Hindenburg! The washerwoman’s child and the East Prussian aristocrat; old-time enemies, now both nearing their graves; each thinking about his country’s safety, and helpless to secure it. Der alte Herr talking about the menace of revolution in Germany; not the respectable kind which would put the Kaiser’s sons on the throne, but a dangerous gutter-revolution, an upsurge of the Lumpenproletariat, led by the one-time odd-job man, the painter of picture postcards, the "Bohemian corporal" named Schicklgruber. Briand demanding the dropping of the Austro-German customs-union project, while Hindenburg pleaded for a chance for his country to sell goods.

Briand denouncing the Stahlhelm and the new pocket-battleships, while Hindenburg complained that France was not keeping her promise to disarm. Hindenburg begging for loans, while Briand explained that France had to keep her gold reserve as the last bulwark of financial security in Europe. No, there wasn’t much chance of their getting together; the only one who could hope to profit by the visit was the aforesaid "Bohemian corporal," whose papers were raving alike at the French visitors and at the German politicians who licked their boots to no purpose.

Adolf Hitler Schicklgruber wouldn’t attack Hindenburg, for Hindenburg was a monument, a tradition, a living legend. The Nazi press would concentrate its venom upon the Chancellor, a Catholic and leader of the Center party, guilty of the crime of signing the Young Plan which sought to keep Germany in slavery until the year 1988. Now Hoover had granted a moratorium, but there was no moratorium for Brüning, no let-up in the furious Nazi campaign.

Lanny Budd knew about it, because Heinrich Jung had got his address, presumably from Kurt, and continued to keep him supplied with literature. There was no one at Shore Acres who could read it but Lanny himself; however, one didn’t need to know German, one had only to look at the headlines to know that it was sensational, and at the cartoons to know that it was a propaganda of cruel and murderous hate. Cartoons of Jews as monsters with swollen noses and bellies, of John Bull as a fat banker sucking the blood of German children, of Marianne as a devouring harpy, of the Russian bear with a knife in his teeth and a bomb in each paw, of Uncle Sam as a lean and sneering Shylock. Better to throw such stuff into the trash-basket without taking off the wrappers.

But that wouldn’t keep the evil flood from engulfing Germany, it wouldn’t keep millions of young people from absorbing a psychopath’s view of the world. Lanny Budd, approaching his thirty-second birthday, wondered if the time hadn’t come to stop playing and find some job to do. But he kept putting it off, because jobs were so scarce, and if you took one, you deprived somebody else of it—someone who needed it much more than you!

I

OCTOBER and early November are the top of the year in the North Atlantic states. There is plenty of sunshine, and the air is clear and bracing. A growing child can toddle about on lawns and romp with dogs, carefully watched by a dependable head nurse. A young mother and father can enjoy motoring and golf, or going into the city to attend art shows and theatrical first nights. Irma had been taken to the museums as a child, but her memories of them were vague. Now she would go with an expert of whom she was proud, and would put her mind on it and try to learn what it was all about, so as not to have to sit with her mouth shut while he and his intellectual friends voiced their ideas.

This pleasant time of year was chosen by Pierre Laval for a visit to Washington, but it wasn’t because of the climate. The Premier of France came because there were now only two entirely solvent great nations in the world, and these two ought to understand and support each other. Germany had got several billion dollars from America, but had to have more, and France didn’t want her to get them until she agreed to do what France demanded. The innkeeper’s son was received with cordiality; excellent dinners were prepared for him, and nobody brought up against him his early Socialistic opinions. Robbie Budd reported that what Laval wanted was for the President to do nothing; to which Robbie’s flippant son replied: "That ought to suit Herbert Hoover right down to the ground."

A few days later came the general elections in Britain. Ramsay MacDonald appealed to the country for support, and with all the great newspapers assuring the voters that the nation had barely escaped collapse, Ramsay’s new National government polled slightly less than half the vote and, under the peculiarities of the electoral system, carried slightly more than eight-ninths of the constituencies. Rick wrote that Ramsay had set the Labor party back a matter of twenty-one years.

Robbie Budd didn’t worry about that, of course; he was certain that the rocks had been passed and that a long stretch of clear water lay before the ship of state. Robbie’s friend Herbert had told him so, and who would know better than the Great Engineer? Surely not the editors of Pink and Red weekly papers! But Lanny perversely went on reading these papers, and presently was pointing out to his father that the British devaluation of the pound was giving them a twenty per cent advantage over American manufacturers in every one of the world’s markets. Odd as it might seem, Robbie hadn’t seen that; but he found it out by cable, for the Budd plant had a big hardware contract canceled in Buenos Aires. One of Robbie’s scouts reported that the order had gone to Birmingham; and wasn’t Robbie hopping!

II

Mr. and Mrs. Lanny Budd took passage on a German steamer to Marseille; a spick-and-span, most elegant steamer, brand-new, as all German vessels had to be, since the old ones had been confiscated under the treaty of Versailles. One of the unforeseen consequences of having compelled the Germans to begin life all over again! Britain and France didn’t like it that their former foe and ever-present rival should have the two fanciest ocean liners, the blue-ribbon holders of the transatlantic service; also the two most modern warships—they were called pocket-battleships, because they weren’t allowed to weigh more than ten thousand tons each, but the Germans had shown that they could get pretty nearly everything into that limit.

This upstart nation was upstarting again, and outdistancing everybody else. The Germans filled the air with outcries against persecutions and humiliations, but they had gone right ahead borrowing money and putting it into new industrial plant, the most modern, most efficient, so that they could undersell all competitors. You might not like Germans, but if you wanted to cross the ocean, you liked a new and shiny boat with officers and stewards in new uniforms, and the cleanest and best table-service. They were so polite, and at the same time so determined; Lanny was interested in talking with them and speculating as to what made them so admirable as individuals and so dangerous as a race.

Right now, of course, they were in trouble, like everybody else. They had the industrial plant, but couldn’t find customers; they had the steamships, but it was hard to get passengers! The other peoples blamed fate or Providence, economic law, the capitalist system, the gold standard, the war, the Reds—but Germans everywhere blamed but one thing, the Versailles Diktat and the reparations it had imposed. Every German was firmly set in the conviction that the Allies were deliberately keeping the Fatherland from getting on its feet again, and that all their trouble was a direct consequence of this. Lanny would point out that now there was a moratorium on all their debts, not only reparations but post-war borrowings, so it ought to be possible for them to recover soon. But he never knew that argument to have the slightest effect; there was a national persecution complex which operated subconsciously, as in an individual.

Since there were so few passengers, Lanny had a week in which to study the ship and those who manned it. Knowing Germany so well, he had a passport to their hearts. He could tell the officers that he had been a guest of General Graf Stubendorf; he could tell the stewards that he had talked with Adolf Hitler; he could tell the crew that he was a brother-in-law of Hansi Robin. The vessel was a miniature nation, with representatives of all the various groups in about the right proportions. Some of the officers had formerly served in the German navy, and some of those who tended the engines had rebelled against them and made the Socialist revolution. In between were the middle classes—stewards, barbers, clerks, radio men, petty officers—all of whom worked obsequiously for tips but would work harder for love if you whispered: "Heil Hitler!"—even though you said it in jest.

Irma couldn’t understand Lanny’s being interested to talk to such people, and for so long a time. He explained that it was a sociological inquiry; if Rick had been along he would have written an article: "The Floating Fatherland." It was a question of the whole future of Germany. How deeply was the propaganda of Dr. Joseph Goebbels taking effect? What were the oilers thinking? What did the scullery men talk about before they dropped into their bunks? There were dyed-in-the-wool Reds, of course, who followed the Moscow line and were not to be swerved; but others had become convinced that Hitler was a genuine friend of the people and would help them to get shorter hours and a living wage. Arguments were going on day and night, an unceasing war of words all over the ship. Which way was the balance swinging?

Important also was what Capain Rundgasse said. As the physician has a bedside manner, so the captain of a passenger liner has what might be called a steamer-chairside manner. He talked with two wealthy and fashionable young Americans, saying that he could understand why they were worried by the political aspect of his country; but really there was no need for concern. Fundamentally all Germans were German, just as all Englishmen were English, and when it was a question of the welfare and safety of the Fatherland all would become as one. That applied to the deluded Socialists, and even to the Communists—all but a few criminal leaders. It applied to the National Socialists especially. If Adolf Hitler were to become Chancellor tomorrow, he would show himself a good German, just like any other, and all good Germans would support him and obey the laws of their country.

III

Bienvenu seemed small and rather dowdy when one came to it from Shore Acres. But it was home, and there were loving hearts here. Beauty had spent a quiet but contented summer, or so she said. That most unlikely of marriages was turning out one of the best; she couldn’t say enough about the goodness and kindness of Parsifal Dingle—that is, not enough to satisfy herself, although she easily satisfied her friends. She was trying her best to become spiritual-minded, and also she had the devil of embonpoint to combat. She consoled herself with the idea that when you were well padded, you didn’t develop wrinldes. She was certainly a blooming Beauty.

Madame Zyszynski had been two or three times to visit Zaharoff at Monte Carlo; then he had gone north to the Chateau de Balin-court, and had written to ask if Beauty would do him the great favor of letting Madame come for a while. She had spent the month of August there, and had been well treated, and impressed by the grandeur of the place, but rather lonely, with those strange Hindu servants to whom she couldn’t talk. When she was leaving, the old gentleman had presented her with a diamond solitaire ring which must have cost twenty or thirty thousand francs. She was proud of it, but afraid to wear it and afraid it might be stolen, so she had asked Beauty to put it away in her safe-deposit box.

Lanny took up the subject of child study again. He would have liked to find out if Baby Frances would discover the art of the dance for herself; but this was not possible, because Marceline was there, dancing all over the place, and nothing could keep her from taking a tiny toddler by the hands and teaching her to caper and jump. Every day the baby grew stronger, and before that winter was over there was a pair of dancers, and if the phonograph or the piano wasn’t handy, Marceline would sing little tunes and sometimes make up words about Baby and herself.

Sophie and her husband would come over for bridge with Beauty and Irma; so Lanny was left free to catch up on his reading or to run over to Cannes to his workers'-education project. The workers hadn’t had any vacation, but were right where he had left them. Intellectually they had gained; nearly all could now make speeches, and as a rule they made them on the subject of Socialism versus Communism. While they all hated Fascism, they didn’t hate it enough to make them willing to get together to oppose it. They were glad to hear Lanny tell about the wonderland of New York; many had got it mixed up with Utopia, and were surprised to hear that it was not being spared by the breakdown of capitalism. Bread- lines and apple-selling on the streets of that city of plutocrats— sapristi!

IV

Another season on the Riviera: from the point of view of the hotelkeepers the worst since the war, but for people who had money and liked quiet the pleasantest ever. The fortunate few had the esplanade and the beaches to themselves; the sunshine was just as bright, the sea as blue, and the flowers of the Cap as exquisite. Food was abundant and low in price, labor plentiful and willing— in short, Providence had fixed everything up for you.

When Irma and Beauty Budd emerged from the hands of modistes and friseurs, all ready for a party, they were very fancy showpieces; Lanny was proud to escort them and to see the attention they attracted. He kept himself clad according to their standards, did the. honors as he had been taught, and for a while was happy as a young man a la mode. His wife was deeply impressed by Emily Chattersworth, that serene and gracious hostess, and was taking her as a model. Irma would remark: "If we had a larger house, we could entertain as Emily does." She would try experiments, inviting this eminent person and that, and when they came she would say to her husband: "I believe you and I could have a salon if we went about it seriously."

Lanny came to recognize that she was considering this as a career. Emily was growing feeble, and couldn’t go on forever; there would have to be someone to take her place, to bring the fashionable French and the fashionable Americans together and let them meet intellectuals, writers and musicians and statesmen who had made names for themselves in the proper dignified way. As a rule such persons didn’t have the money or time to entertain, nor were their wives up to it; if you rendered that free service, it made you "somebody" in your own right.

Lanny had said, rather disconcertingly, that she didn’t know enough for the job; since which time Irma had been on watch. She had met a number of celebrities, and studied each one, thinking: "Could I handle you? What is it you want?" They seemed to like good food and wine, like other people; they appreciated a fine

house and liked to come into it and sun themselves. Certainly they liked beautiful women—these were the suns! Irma’s dressing-room in the Cottage was rather small, but it contained a pier-glass mirror, and she knew that what she saw there was all right. She knew that her manner of reserve impressed people; it gave her a certain air of mystery, and caused them to imagine things about her which weren’t really there. The problem was to keep them from finding out!

Each of the great men had his "line," something he did better than anybody else. Lanny assumed that you had to read his book, listen to his speeches, or whatever it was; but Irma made up her mind that this was her husband’s naivete. He would have had to, but a woman didn’t. A woman observed that a man wanted to talk about himself, and a woman who was good at listening to that was good enough for anything. She had to express admiration, but not too extravagantly; that was a mistake the gushy woman made, and the man decided that she was a fool. But the still, deep woman, the Mona Lisa woman, the one who said in a dignified way: "I have wanted very much to know about that—please tell me more," she was the one who warmed a celebrity’s heart.

The problem, Irma decided, was not to get them to talk, but to get them to stop! The function of a salonniere was to apportion the time, to watch the audience and perceive when it wanted a change and bring about the change so tactfully that nobody noticed it. Irma watched the technique of her hostess, and began asking questions; and this was by no means displeasing to Emily, for she too was not above being flattered and liked the idea of taking on an understudy. She showed Irma her address-book, full of secret marks which only her confidential secretary understood. Some meant good things and some bad.

Lanny perceived that this developing interest in a salon was based upon a study of his own peculiarities. He had always loved Emily and enjoyed her affairs, having been admitted to them even as a boy, because he had such good manners. What Irma failed to note was that Lanny was changing: the things which had satisfied him as a boy didn’t necessarily do so when he had passed his thirty-second birthday, and when the capitalist system had passed its apogee. He would come home from one of Emily’s soirees and open up a bunch of mail which was like a Sophoclean chorus lamenting the doom of the House of Oedipus. The front page of a newspaper was a record of calamities freshly befallen, while the editorial page was a betrayal of fears of others to come.

For years the orthodox thinkers of France had congratulated that country upon its immunity from depressions. Thanks to the French Revolution, the agriculture of the country was in the hands of peasant proprietors; also the industry was diversified, not concentrated and specialized like that of Germany, Britain, and America. France had already devalued her money, one step at a time; she possessed a great store of gold, and so had escaped that hurricane which had thrown Britain off the gold standard, followed by a dozen other countries in a row.

But now it appeared that the orthodox thinkers had been wishful. Hard times were hitting France; unemployment was spreading, the rich sending their money abroad, the poor hiding what they could get in their mattresses or under the oldest olive tree in the field. Suffering and fear everywhere—so if you were a young idealist with a tender heart, how could you be happy? Especially if your doctrines persuaded you that you had no right to the money you were spending! If you persisted in keeping company with revolutionists and malcontents who were only too ready to support your notions—and to draw the obvious conclusion that, since your money didn’t belong to you, it must belong to them! As a rule they asked you to give it for the "cause," and many were sincere and would really spend it for the printing of literature or the rental of meeting-places. That justified them in their own eyes and in yours, but hardly in the eyes of the conservative-minded ladies and gentlemen whom your wife expected to invite to a salon!

Some five years had passed since Lanny had begun helping workers' education in the Midi, and that was time enough for a genera­tion of students to have passed through his hands and give him some idea of what he was accomplishing. Was he helping to train genuine leaders of the working class? Or was he preparing some careerist who would sell out the movement for a premiership? Sometimes Lanny was encouraged and sometimes depressed. That is the fate of every teacher, but Lanny had no one of experience to tell him so.

Bright lads and girls revealed themselves in the various classes, and became the objects of his affection and his hopes. He found that, being children of the Midi, they all wanted to learn to be orators. Many acquired the tricks of eloquence before they had got any solid foundation, and when you tried to restrain them and failed, you decided that you had spoiled a good mechanic. Many Were swept off their feet by the Communists, who for some reason were the most energetic, the most persistent among proletarian agitators; also they had a system of thought wearing the aspect and using the language of science, and thus being impressive to young minds. Lanny Budd, talking law and order, peaceable persuasion, gradual evolution, found himself pigeon-holed as vieux jeu, or in American a "back number." "Naturally," said the young Reds, "you feel that way because you have money. You can wait. But what have we got?"

This was true enough to trouble Lanny’s mind continually. He watched his own influence upon his proletarian friends and wondered, was he really doing them good? Or were the preachers of class struggle right, and the social chasm too wide for any bridge-builder? What community of feeling or taste could survive between the exquisite who lived in Bienvenu and the roustabout’s son who lived in the cellar of a tenement in the Old Town of Cannes? Was it not possible that in coming to the school well dressed, and speaking the best French, Lanny was setting up ideals and standards which were as apt to corrupt as to stimulate?

His friends at the school saw him driving his fancy car, they saw him with his proud young wife; for though she came rarely, they knew her by sight and still more by reputation. And what would that do to youths at the age of susceptibility? Would it teach them to be loyal to some working-class girl, some humble, poorly dressed comrade in their movement? Or would it fill them with dreams of rising to the heaven where the elegant rich ladies were kept? Lanny, surveying his alluring spouse, knew that there was in all the world no stronger bait for the soul and mind of a man. He had taken that bait more than once in his life; also he knew something about the four Socialists who had become premiers of France, and knew that in every case it had been the hand of some elegant siren which had drawn him out of the path of loyalty and into that of betrayal.

VI

There stood unused on the Bienvenu estate a comfortable dwelling, the Lodge, which Lanny had built for Nina and Rick. He begged them to come and occupy it this season; he had some important ideas he wanted to discuss. But Rick said the pater had been hit too hard by the slump, which seemed to have been aimed at landowners all over the world. Lanny replied with a check to cover the cost of the tickets; it had been earned by the sale of one of Marcel’s pictures, and there were a hundred more in the storeroom. Also, Lanny explained, the vegetable garden at Bienvenu had been enlarged, so as to give some of Leese’s cousins a chance to earn their keep. Come and help to eat the stuff!

Mother and father and the three children came; and after they had got settled, Lanny revealed what he had in mind: to get some more money out of the picture business (perhaps Irma would want to put some in) to found a weekly paper, with Rick as editor. They would try to wake up the intellectuals and work for some kind of co-operative system in Europe before it was too late. Lanny said he didn’t know enough to edit a paper himself, but would be what in America was called an "angel."

Rick said that was a large order, and did his friend realize what he was letting himself in for? The commercial magazine field was pretty crowded, and a propaganda paper never paid expenses, but cost like sin. Lanny said: "Well, I’ve spent my share on sin, and I might try something else for a change."

"One can’t publish a paper in a place like Cannes," declared Rick. "Where would you go?"

"I’ve wondered if it mightn’t be possible to bring out a paper in London, and at the same time in Paris in French?"

"You mean with the same contents?"

"Well, practically the same."

"I should say that might be done if the paper were general and abstract. If you expect to deal with current events, you’d find the interests and tastes of the two peoples too far apart."

"The purpose would be to bring them together, Rick. If they read the same things, they might learn to understand each other."

"Yes, but you’re trying to force them to read what they don’t want. The paper would seem foreign to both sides; your enemies would call it that and make it appear still more so."

"I don’t say it would be easy," replied the young idealist. "What makes it hard is exactly what makes it important."

"I don’t dispute the need," Rick said. "But it would cost a pile of money: A paper has to come out regularly, and if you have a deficit, it goes on and on."

"Would you be interested in it as a job?" persisted the other.

"I’d have to think it over. I’ve come down here with a mind full of a play."

That was the real trouble, as it turned out. There was no use imagining that anybody could edit a paper as a sideline; it was a full-time job for several men, and Rick would have to give up his life’s ambition, which was to become a dramatist. He had had just enough success to keep him going. That, too, was an important task: to force modern social problems into the theater, to break down the taboo which put the label of propaganda upon any effort to portray that class struggle which was the basic fact of the modern world. Rick had tried it eight or ten times, and said that if he had put an equal amount of energy and ability into portraying the sexual entanglements of the idle rich, he could have joined that envied group and had plenty of entanglements. But he was always thinking of some wonderful new idea which no audience would be able to resist; he had one now, and so the Franco-British weekly would have to wait until the potential editor had relieved his mind.

Lanny said: "If it’s a good play, maybe Irma and I will back it." He always included his wife, out of politeness, and the same motive would cause her to come along.

"That costs money, too," was Rick’s reply. "But at least, if the play falls flat, you don’t have to produce it again the next week and the week after."

VII

Zaharoff was back at his hotel in Monte, and would send his car for Madame Zyszynski, and write notes expressing his gratitude to the family. He said he wished there were something he could do in return; and apparently he meant it, for when Robbie Budd came into possession of a block of New England-Arabian stock, he came to see the old man, who bought the stock at Robbie’s own price. It wasn’t a large amount, but Lanny said it was a sign that the duquesa really was "coming through."

Beauty was devoured by curiosity about these seances, and questioned Madame every time she came back; but the medium stuck to her story that she had no idea of what happened when she was in her trance. Evidently Tecumseh was behaving well, for when she came out she would find the sitter gracious and considerate. She always had tea with the maid of Sir Basil’s married daughter, and sometimes the great man himself asked questions about her life and ideas. Evidently he was reading along the lines of spiritualism, but he never said a word about himself, nor did he mention the duquesa’s name.

Beauty thought it was poor taste for a borrower to keep the owner so entirely in the dark; and perhaps the idea occurred to Sir Basil, for he called Lanny on the telephone and asked if he could spare time to run over and see him. Lanny offered to drive Madame on the next trip, and Zaharoff said all right; Lanny might attend the seance if it would interest him. That was certainly an advance, and could only mean that Zaharoff had managed to make friends with the Iroquois chieftain and his spirit band.

"All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field." So Lanny’s stern grandfather had quoted, at the time when Lanny was making a scandal in Newcastle by falling in love with a young actress. The playboy thought of it now as he sat and watched this man who might be as old as Grandfather Samuel. His suave manners were a mask and his soul a bundle of fears. He had fought so hard for wealth and power, and now he sat and watched infirmity creeping over him and everything slipping out of his grasp. "Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labor that I had labored to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun."

Secretiveness was the breath of the munitions king’s being. For nearly a year he had had Tecumseh and the spirits to himself, and if he had told anyone what was happening it hadn’t come to Lanny’s ears. But he couldn’t hold out indefinitely, because his soul was racked with uncertainties. Was it really the duquesa who was sending him messages? Or was it merely a fantasy, a cruel hoax of somebody or something unknown? Lanny had attended many seances, and was continually studying the subject. The old man had to know what he made of it.

The sitting itself was rather commonplace. Evidently the munitions king and the spirit of his dead wife had become established on a firm domestic basis. She came right away, as she would have done if he had called her from the next room. She didn’t have much to talk about—which probably would have been the case if her "grass" had not withered and blown away. The only difference was that Zaharoff would have known the "grass" for what it was; but this imitation grass, this mirage, this painting on a fog—what was it? She assured him that she loved him—of which he had never had any doubt. She assured him that she was happy—she had said it many times, and it was good news if it was she.

As to the conditions of her existence she was vague, as the spirits generally are. They explain that it is difficult for mortal minds to comprehend their mode of being; and that is a possibility, but also it may be an evasion. The duquesa had given evidence of her reality, but now she seemed to wish that he should take it as settled; that made her happier—and of course he sought to make her happy.

But afterward he tormented himself with doubts. Should he torment her with them?

She greeted Lanny and talked to him. She had come to him first, with messages to her husband, and now she thanked him for delivering them. It was exactly as if they had been together in the garden of the Paris mansion. She reminded him of it, and of the snow-white poodles shaved to resemble lions. She had escorted him into the library, and he, a courteous youth, had understood that she might have no more time for him, and had volunteered to make himself happy with a magazine. Did he remember what it was? She said: La Vie Parisienne, and he remembered. He darted a glance at Zaharoff, and thought he saw the old white imperial trembling. "Tell him that that is correct," insisted the Spanish duquesa with a Polish accent. "He worries so much, pauvre cheri."

The spirit talked about the unusually wet weather, and about the depression; she said that both would end soon. Such troubles did not affect her, except as they affected those she loved. She knew everything that was happening to them; apparently she knew whatever she wanted to know. Lanny asked her politely, could she bring them some fact about the affairs of her ancient family which her husband had never known, but which he might verify by research; something that was in an old document, or hidden in a secret vault in a castle; preferably something she hadn’t known during her own lifetime, so that it couldn’t have been in the subconscious mind of either of them?

"Oh, that subconscious mind!" laughed the Spanish lady. "It is a name that you make yourself unhappy with. What is mind when it isn’t conscious? Have you ever known such a thing?"

"No," said Lanny, "because then it would be conscious. But what is it that acts like a subconscious mind?"

"Perhaps it is God," was the reply; and Lanny wondered: had he brought with him some fragment of the subconscious mind of Parsifal Dingle, and injected it into the subconscious mind which called itself Maria del Pilar Antonia Angela Patrocino Simon de Muguiro у Berute, Duquesa de Marqueni у Villafranca de los Caballeros?

VIII

When the seance was over, the maid invited Madame into another room to have tea; and Sir Basil had tea and a long talk with Lanny. He wanted to know what the younger man had learned and what he now believed. Lanny, watching the aging and anxious face, knew exactly what was wanted. Zaharoff wasn’t an eager scientist, loving truth for truth’s sake; he was a man tottering on the edge of the grave, wanting to believe that when he departed this earth he was going to join the woman who had meant so much to him. And what was Lanny, a scientist or a friend?

He could say, quite honestly, that he didn’t know; that he wavered, sometimes one way, sometimes the other. Then he could go on to waver in the right direction. Certainly it had seemed to be the duquesa speaking: not the voice, but the mind, the personality, something which one never touches, never sees, but which one comes to infer, which manifests itself by various modes of communication. The duquesa speaking over a telephone, for example, and the line in rather bad condition!

Zaharoff was pleased. He said he had been reading the books. "Telepathy?"' he said. "It seems to me just a word they have invented to save having to think. What is this telepathy? How would it work? It cannot be material vibrations, because distance makes no difference to it. You have to suppose that one mind can dip into another mind at will and get anything it wants. And is that easier to credit than survival of the personality?"

Said Lanny: "It is reasonable to think that there might be a core of the consciousness which survives for a time, just as the skeleton survives the body." But he saw that this wasn’t a pleasing image to the old gentleman, and hastened to add: "Maybe time isn’t a fundamental reality; maybe everything which has ever existed still exists in some form beyond our reach or understanding. We have no idea what reality may be, or our own relationship to it. Maybe we make immortality for ourselves by desiring it. Bernard Shaw says that birds grew wings because they desired and needed to fly."

The Knight Commander and Grand Officer had never heard of Back to Methuselah, and Lanny told him about that metabiological panorama. They talked about abstruse subjects until they were like Milton’s fallen angels, in wand’ring mazes lost; also until Lanny remembered that he had to take his wife to a dinner-party. He left the old gentleman in a much happier frame of mind, but he felt a little guilty, thinking: "I hope Robbie doesn’t have any more stocks to sell him!"

IX

Lanny found his wife dressing, and while he was doing the same she told him some news. "Uncle Jesse was here."

"Indeed?" replied Lanny. "Who saw him?"

"Beauty was in town. I had quite a talk with him."

"What’s he doing?"

"He’s absorbed in his election campaign."

"How could he spare the time to come here?"

"He came on business. He wants you to sell some of his paint-ings."

"Oh, my God, Irma! I can’t sell those things, and he knows it."

"Aren’t they good enough?"

"They’re all right in a way; but they’re quite undistinguished-there must be a thousand painters in Paris doing as well."

"Don’t they manage to sell their work?"

"Sometimes they do; but I can’t recommend art unless I know it has special merit."

"They seemed to me quite charming, and I should think a lot of other people would like them."

"You mean he brought some with him?"

"A whole taxicab-load. We had quite a show, all afternoon; that, and the Comintern, and that-what is it?—diagrammatical?—"

"Dialectical materialism?"

"He says he could make a Communist out of me if it wasn’t for my money. So he tried to get some of it away from me."

"He asked you for money?"

"He may be a bad painter, dear, but he’s a very good salesman."

"You mean you bought some of those things?"

"Two."

"For the love of Mike! What did you pay?"

"Ten thousand francs apiece."

"But, Irma, that’s preposterous! He never got half that for a painting in all his life."

"Well, it made him happy. He’s your mother’s brother, and I like to keep peace in the family."

"Really, darling, you don’t have to do things like that. Beauty won’t like it a bit."

"It’s much easier to say yes than no," replied Irma, watching in the mirror of her dressing-table while her maid put the last touches to her coiffure. "Uncle Jesse’s not a bad sort, you know."

"Where are the paintings?" asked the husband.

"I put them in the closet for the present. Don’t delay now, or we’ll be late."

"Let me have just a glance."

"I didn’t buy them for art," insisted the other; "but I do like them, and maybe I’ll hang them in this room if they won’t hurt your feelings."

Lanny got out the canvases and set them up against two chairs. They were the regular product which Jesse Blackless turned out at the rate of one every fortnight whenever he chose. One was a little gamin, and the other an old peddler of charcoal; both sentimental, because Uncle Jesse really loved these рооr people and imagined things about them which fitted in with his theories. Irma didn’t have such feelings, but Lanny had taught her that she ought to, and doubtless she was trying. "Are they really so bad?" she asked.

"They aren’t any bargain," he answered.

"It’s only eight hundred dollars, and he says he’s broke on account of putting everything into the campaign. You know, Lanny, it might not be such a bad thing to have your uncle a member of the Chamber."

"But such a member, Irma! He’ll make himself an international scandal. I ought to have mentioned to you that he’s gone into a working-class district and is running against a Socialist."

"Well," said the young wife, amiably, "I’ll help the Socialist, too, if you wish it."

"You’ll take two horses, and hitch one to the front of your cart and one to the back, and drive them as hard as you can in opposite directions."

Irma wasn’t usually witty; but now she thought of Shore Acres, and said: "You know how it is, I’ve been paying men right along to exercise my horses."

X

Alfred Pomeroy-Nielson the younger was at school in England; he came to Bienvenu for the Easter vacation, and he and Marceline took up their life at the point where they had dropped it on board the Bessie Budd, a year and a half ago. Meanwhile they had been getting ready for each other, and at the same time making important discoveries about themselves.

The daughter of Marcel Detaze and Beauty Budd, not quite fourteen, was at that point "where the brook and river meet, womanhood and childhood fleet." Like the diving-champion on the end of a springboard, with every muscle taut, the body poised in the moment of swaying forward, so she presented herself above the swimming-pool of fashion, pleasure, and so many kinds of glory. She had gazed into it as a fascinated spectator and now was getting ready to plunge—much sooner than any member of her family knew or desired. That was her secret; that was the meaning of the fluttering heart, the flushed cheeks, the manner of excitement—she couldn’t wait to begin to live!

Marceline loved her mother, she adored her handsome and fashionable half-brother, she looked with awe upon the blooming Juno who had come recently into her life, surrounded by a golden aura, talked about by everybody, pictured in the newspapers—in short, a queen of plutocracy, that monde which Marceline had been taught to consider beau, grand, haut, chic, snob, elegant, et d'élite. She was going to show herself off in it, and no use trying to change her mind. Men were beginning to look at her, and she was not failing to notice that or to know what it meant. Hadn’t it been in the conversation of all the smart ladies since she had begun to understand the meaning of words? Those ladies were growing old, they were on the way out—and Marceline was coming, it was her turn!

And now this English lad, of almost the same age as herself, and destined, in the family conversation, to become her life partner. Maybe so, but first there were a few problems to be settled; first it was necessary to determine who would be the boss in that family. Alfy was serious, like his father; extremely conscientious, more reticent than seemed natural in one so young, and tormented by a secret pride. Marceline, on the other hand, was impulsive, exuberant, talkative, and just as proud in her own way. Each of these temperaments was in secret awe of the other; the natural strangeness of a youth to a maid and of a maid to a youth accentuated their differences and offended their self-esteem. Was he scorning her when he was silent? Was she teasing him when she laughed? Exasperation was increased by arrogance on both sides.

It is the English custom, when two boys fall to pommeling each other, to form a ring and let them fight it out. Now it appeared to be the same with the sex-war. Rick said: "They’d better settle it now than later." He gave advice only when it was asked, and poor Alfy was proud even with his father. It was up to a man to handle his own women!

Marceline, on the other hand, fled to her mother and had weeping-fits. Beauty tried to explain to her the peculiar English temperament, which makes itself appear cold but really isn’t. The short vacation was passing, and Beauty advised her daughter to make it up quickly; but Marceline exclaimed: "I think they are horrid people, and if he won’t have better manners I don’t want to have anything more to do with him." The French and the English had been fighting ever since the year 1066.

XI

Oddly enough, it was the man from Iowa who served as international mediator. Parsifal Dingle never meddled in anybody’s affairs, but talked about the love of God, and perhaps it was a coincidence that he talked most eloquently when he knew that two persons were at odds. God was all and God was love; God was alive and God was here; God knew what we were doing and saying and thinking, and when what we did was not right, we were deliberately cutting ourselves off from Him and destroying our own happiness. That was the spiritual law; God didn’t have to punish us, we punished ourselves; and if we humbled ourselves before Him, we exalted ourselves before one another. So on through a series of mystical statements which came like a message from a much better world.

All this would have been familiar doctrine to the forebears of either of these young people. Perhaps ideas have to be forgotten in order to become real again; anyhow, to both Marceline and Alfy this strange gentleman was the originator or discoverer of awe-inspiring doctrines. A rosy-cheeked, cherubic gentleman with graying hair and the accent of the prairies. Once when he wanted to bathe his hands on board the sailboat he had used what he called a "wawsh-dish," which Alfy thought was the funniest combination of words he had ever heard.

But apparently God didn’t object to the Iowa accent, for God came to him and told him what to do. And when you thought of God, not somewhere up in the sky on a throne, but living in your heart, a part of yourself in some incomprehensible way, then suddenly it seemed silly to be quarreling with somebody who was a friend of the family, even if not your future spouse! Better to forget about it—at least to the extent of a game of tennis.

Beauty thought how very convenient, having a spiritual healer in the family! She thought: "I am an unworthy woman, and I must try to be like him and love everybody, and value them for their best qualities. I really ought to go to Lanny’s school, and meet some of those poor people, and try to find in them what he finds." She would think these thoughts while putting on a costly evening-gown which Irma had given her after two or three wearings; she would be es­corted to a party at the home of the former Baroness de la Tourette, and would listen to gossip about a circus-rider who had married an elderly millionaire and was cutting a swath on this Coast of Pleasure. The ladies would tear her reputation to shreds, and Beauty would enjoy their cruel cleverness and forget all about the fact that God was listening to every word. A complicated world, so very hard to be good in!