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millions of persons who desired to establish their ancestry. An extraordinary development—

there were persons who had an Aryan mother and a Jewish father, or an Aryan grandmother

and a Jewish grandfather, who instituted researches as to the morals of their female ancestors,

and established themselves as Aryans by proving themselves to be bastards! Before long the

Nazis discovered that there were some Jews who were useful, so there was officially

established a caste of "honorary Aryans." Truly it seemed that a great people had gone mad;

but it is a fact well known to alienists that you cannot convince a madman of his own

condition, and only make him madder by trying.

By one means or another it was conveyed to leading Jews that they had better resign from

directorships of corporations, and from executive positions which were desired by the nephews

or cousins of some Nazi official. Frequently the methods used were such that the Jew

committed suicide; and while these events were not reported in the press, word about them

spread by underground channels. That was the way with the terror; people disappeared, and

rumors started, and sometimes the rumors became worse than the reality. Old prisons and

state institutions, old army barracks which had stood empty since the Versailles treaty, were

turned into concentration camps and rapidly filled with men and women; motor trucks

brought new loads daily, until the total came near to a hundred thousand.

Lanny wrote again to say what a mistake his friends were making not to come and witness

Hansi's musical and Irma's social triumphs. This time Johannes's reply was that his business

cares were beginning to wear on him, and that his physicians advised a sea trip. He was

getting the Bessie Budd ready for another cruise, this time a real one; he wanted Hansi and

Bess to meet him at one of the northern French ports, and he hoped that the Budds would

come along— the whole family, Lanny and Irma, Mr. and Mrs. Dingle, Marceline and Baby

Frances, with as many governesses and nurses as they pleased. As before, the cruise would be

to whatever part of the world the Budd family preferred; Johannes suggested crossing the

Atlantic again and visiting Newcastle and Long Island; then, in the autumn, they might go

down to the West Indies, and perhaps through the Panama Canal to California, and if they

wished, to Honolulu and Japan, Bali, Java, India, Persia—all the romantic and scenic and

historic places they could think of. A university under Diesel power!

X

This made it necessary for Irma to come to a decision which she had postponed to the last

moment. Was she going to take the palace for another year? She had got used to it, and had a

competent staff well trained; also she was established as a hostess, and it seemed a shame to

lose all this momentum. But, on the other hand, money was growing scarcer and scarcer. The

dreadful depression—Lanny had shown her the calculations of an economist that it had cost

the United States half a dozen times the cost of the World War. Thanks to the Reconstruction

Finance Corporation, interest payments on industrial bonds were being met, but many of

Irma's "blue chip" stocks were paying no dividends, and she was telling her friends that she

was living on chocolate, biscuits, and Coca-Cola—meaning not that these were her diet, but

her dividends.

She had Shore Acres on her hands with its enormous overhead; she had had to cut down on

her mother, and the mother in turn had notified all the help that they might stay on and work

for their keep, but there would be no more salaries. Even so, the food bill was large, and the

taxes exorbitant—when were taxes not? Mrs. Barnes's letters conveyed to her daughter a sense

of near destitution.

"You don't really care very much for this palace, do you, Lanny?" So asked the distressed one,

lying in the pink satin splendor of the bed in which Madame de Maintenon was reputed to

have entertained the Sun King.

"You know, dear, I don't undertake to tell you how to spend your money."

"But I'm asking you."

"You know without asking. If you spend more money than you have, you're poor, no matter

what the amount is."

"Do you think if we come back to Paris after the depression, I'll be able to start as a hostess

again?"

"It depends entirely upon how much of your money you have managed to hold on to."

"Oh, Lanny, you're horrid!" exclaimed the hostess.

"You asked for it," he chuckled.

Nearly a year had passed since the Queen Mother had seen her grandchild, and that was

something to be taken into consideration. Her satisfaction would be boundless; and it would

be a pleasure to meet all those New York friends and hear the gossip. Lanny could stand it if it

wasn't for too long. And what a relief to Uncle Joseph Barnes, trustee and manager of the

Barnes estate, to know that his charge wouldn't be drawing any checks for a year!

"Lanny, do you suppose that Johannes can really afford to take care of us all that time?"

"He could go alone if he preferred," replied the son of Budd's. "As a matter of fact, I suspect

the rascal has more money now than ever before in his life. He makes it going and coming;

whether times are good or bad; whether the market goes up or down."

"How does he manage it, Lanny?"

"He's watching all the time, and he keeps his money where he can shift it quickly. He's a bull

in good times and a bear in bad."

"It's really quite wonderful," said Irma. "Do you suppose we could learn to do things that

way?"

"Nothing would please him more than to teach us; but the trouble is you have to put your

mind on it and keep it there."

"I suppose it would get to be a bore," admitted Irma, stretching her lovely arms and yawning

in the pink satin couch of the Grand Monarque's official mistress.

XI

The young couple ran down to Juan, and Irma and Beauty held a sort of mothers' conference

on the problems of their future. Beauty was keen on yachting trips; she found them a

distinguished mode of travel; she had learned her geography and history that way, and Irma

might do the same. But the important thing was the safety they afforded. Beauty didn't care

how much Red and Pink talk her young people indulged in, provided that outside Reds and

Pinks couldn't get at them, to borrow their money, get them to start schools or papers or what

not, and involve them in fights with Fascists and police. Carry them off to sea and keep them—

and perhaps find some lovely tropical island where they could settle down and live in peace

and harmony until the cycle of revolutions and counter-revolutions had been completed! Let

the yacht serve as a supply ship to bring the latest musical compositions and whatever else

they had read of; but no Communist or Socialist agitators, no Fascists or Nazis marching,

shouting, brandishing guns and daggers! "Do you suppose they have mosquitoes in the South

Seas?" inquired the soft pink Beauty Budd.

She persuaded Irma that this was the way to keep her temperamental husband happy and

safe. Paris was a frightfully dangerous place right now; look at the way Jesse was carrying on,

rushing about from one meeting to another, making hysterical speeches, calling the Nazis all

the bad names in the French language! A copy of L’Humanité came every day to Bienvenu,

and Beauty would look into it sometimes, thinking that it was her duty to keep track of her

brother's doings; it made her quail, for she knew what fury it would arouse in the Hitlerites,

and she knew how many rich and important persons in France sympathized with them. The

Croix de Feu, the Jeunesse Française and other groups were preparing to meet force with

force; the great banks and other vested interests would surely not permit their power to be

destroyed without a fight, and it would be far more bloody and terrible than what had

happened in Germany. "Let's get away from it," pleaded Beauty. "Stay until the storm blows

over, and we can judge whether it's safe to return."

Irma was persuaded, and they sat down and composed between them a letter to Nina,

tactfully contrived to be read by Rick without giving him offense. There wasn't any danger in

England—at least, none that Rick would admit—and the word "escapist" was one of his

strongest terms of contempt. To Rick the cruise was presented as an ideal opportunity to

concentrate upon the writing of a new play. On Nina's part it would be an act of friendship to

come and make a fourth hand at bridge. To Alfy it would offer lessons in geography and

history, plus a chance to fight out his temperamental differences with Marceline. If the

parents didn't want to take the youngster from school so early, he could cross to New York

by steamer and spend the summer with the party.

They read this letter to Lanny, who said it was all right, but he could do better as concerned

his chum. Lanny was cooking up in his head a marvelous scheme. He was guessing the

psychology of a Jewish money-master who had just witnessed the seizing of his country by a

bunch of gangsters. It was bound to have made a dent in his mind, and dispose him to realize

that he and the other capitalists were living and operating inside the crater of a volcano. Lanny

was planning to lay a subtle and well-disguised siege to one of the wealthiest of Jews, to

persuade him that some form of social change was inevitable, and to get his help to bring it

about in orderly fashion. It was the plan which Lanny had already discussed with Rick, to start

a weekly paper of free discussion, not pledged to any party or doctrine, but to the general

tendency towards co-operative industry conducted under the democratic process.

"We can have him to ourselves for several months, maybe for a year; and if we can persuade

him to back us, we can do the job on a big scale and make a real go of it. Won't you come and

help? You can answer his questions so much better than I, and I believe you could put it

through."

This was a greater temptation than any Utopian dreamer could resist. Rick said, "All right,"

and Lanny telegraphed the decision to Johannes. He was tempted to repeat the quotation from

Tennyson's Ulysses which he had used a few years ago on a similar occasion—"My purpose

holds to sail beyond the sunset and the baths of all the western stars, until I die." But he

reminded himself that the Fatherland was now Hitlerland, and a sense of humor has never

been a prominent German characteristic. What might not a Nazi party censor make out of eight

or ten lines of English blank verse telegraphed from the French Riviera!

BOOK FOUR

As on a Darkling Plain

16

Root of all evil

I

A WORLD conqueror had appeared in modern times. Alexander, Caesar, Attila, Genghis

Khan, Napoleon—another such as these, appearing in the age of electricity, of rotary presses

and radio, when nine men out of ten would have said it was impossible. A world conqueror has

to be a man of few ideas, and those fixed; a peculiar combination of exactly the right qualities,

both good and bad—iron determination, irresistible energy, and no scruples of any sort. He

has to know what he wants, and permit no obstacle to stand in the way of his getting it. He has