but one rule: to think of everything that ten thousand Wurttembergers could possibly want,
and promise it to them, to be delivered on the day when they would elect the candidates of the
N.S.D.A.P.
Lanny said: "That's surely the way to get out the vote!" Irma, who didn't understand what
the orator was promising, and had to judge by gestures and tones, remarked: "It is surprising
how much like Uncle Jesse he sounds."
"Don't let either of them hear that!" chuckled the husband.
XII
It was a political campaign of frenzied hate, close to civil war. Troops of armed men
marched, glaring at other troops when they passed, and ready to fly at the others' throats; in the
working class districts they did so, and bystanders had to flee for their lives. The conservatives,
who called themselves Democrats and Nationalists, had their
the Nazis had their S.S.'s and S.A.'s, the Sozis had their
their
cartoons, the flags and banners, all had symbols and slogans expressive of hatred of other people,
whether Germans of the wrong class, or Russians, French, Czechs, Poles, or Jews. Impossible to
understand so many kinds of hatreds or the reasons for them. Irma said: "It's horrible, Lanny.
Let's not have any more to do with it."
She had met charming people in Berlin, and now Johannes gave her a reception, and they all
came; when they found that she didn't like politics they said they didn't blame her, and talked
about the music festivals, the art exhibitions, the coming yacht regattas. The Jewish money-lord
tried to keep friendly with everybody, and he knew that many who would not ordinarily darken
his door were willing to come when a celebrated American heiress was his guest. According to his
custom, he did not try to hide this, but on the contrary made a point of mentioning it and
thanking her. She knew that this Jewish family had risen in the world with the help of the
Budds; but so long as they showed a proper gratitude and didn't develop a case of "swelled
head," it was all right for the help to continue.
German big business men came, and their wives, still bigger as a rule. German aristocrats
came, tall, stiff gentlemen wearing monocles, and their
of Bayreuth. All had long titles, and left off none of the
Herr vons from Herr Barons, Herr Grafen from Erlauchts, and Erlauchts from Durchlauchts.
Graf Stubendorf came, reported on affairs at home, and cordially renewed his invitation for
next Christmas, or for the shooting season earlier. The new Chancellor came; tall and thin-
faced, the smartest of diplomats and most elegant of Catholic aristocrats, he lived entangled in
a net of intrigue of his own weaving. A son of the Russian ghetto might have been
overwhelmed by the honor of such a presence, but Johannes took it as the payment of a debt.
The gentlemen of the fashionable Herren Klub hadn't been able to raise enough money to
save their party, so the Chancellor had had to come to the Jew for help.
Irma found him charming, and told her husband, who remarked: "There is no greater rascal
in all Europe. Franz von Papen was put out of the United States before we entered the war
because he was financing explosions in munitions plants."
"Oh, darling!" she exclaimed. "You say such horrid things! You can't really know that!"
Said the young Pink: "He didn't have sense enough to burn his check-stubs, and the British
captured his ship on the way home and published all the data."
13
I
THE cruise of the Bessie Budd began. Not a long cruise, never more than a week at a time in
these disturbed days. They stopped to fish and swim, and they sent out upon the North Sea
breezes a great deal of romantic and delightful music. The seamen and the fishermen who
glided by in the night must have been moved to wonder, and perhaps some young Heine
among them took flight upon the wings of imagination. Far on the Scottish rock-coast, where
the little gray castle towers above the raging sea, there, at the high-arched window, stands a
beautiful frail woman, tender-pellucid and marble-pale, and she plays the harp and sings, and
the wind sweeps through her long tresses and carries her dark song over the wide storming
sea.
Resting from such flights of fancy the solicitous Lanny Budd had quiet talks with his host,
hoping by gentle and tactful intervention to lessen the strain of that family conflict which had
been revealed to him. Johannes explained, in much the same words that Robbie Budd had
used when Lanny was a small boy, that the business man did not think merely of the money
he was making or might make; he acquired responsibilities to thousands of investors, not all of
them greedy idlers, but many aged persons, widows, and orphans having no means of support
