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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 theinside 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 Jun kers 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.