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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, andindeed 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