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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