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Suddenly the orator stopped. He didn't say: "Have I convinced you?" That would have been

expressing a doubt, which no heaven-sent evangelist ever admits. He said: "Now, Herr Budd,

go and do your duty. Make one simple rule that I have maintained ever since I founded this

movement—never to speak to a Jew, even over the telephone." Then, abruptly: "I have other

engagements and have to be excused."

The three quickly said their adieus; and when they were outside, Lanny, in his role of secret

agent, remarked: "No one can wonder that he stirs his audiences."

When he was back in the hotel with his wife and mother, he exclaimed: "Well, I know now

why Göring is keeping Freddi."

"Why?" they asked, with much excitement.

Lanny answered, in a cold fury: "He is going to breed him with a female ape!"

IX

Lanny had to play out the game according to the rules. He must not let either of these friends

discover that he had brought them here solely in the hope of persuading Hitler to release a

Jewish prisoner. It was for friendship, for sociability, for music and art. Lanny and Kurt must

play piano duets as in the old days. Zoltan must take them through the two Pinakotheks and

give them the benefit of his art knowledge. Beauty and Irma must put on their best togs and

accompany them to the Hof-und-National Theater for Die Meistersinger, and to the Prinz-

Regenten Theater for Goethe's Egmont. There must be a dinner at which distinguished

personalities in the musical world were invited to meet a leading Komponist. After a symphony

concert in the Tonhalle, Lanny listened to Kurt's highly technical comments on the

conductor and the sounds produced. The tone was hard, cold, and brilliant; it lacked "body,"

by which Kurt explained that he meant a just proportion of low and middle to high registers.

He accused the too-ardent Kapellmeister of exaggerating his nuances, of expanding and

contracting his volume unduly, fussing over his orchestra like an old hen with a too-large

brood of chicks—certainly an undignified procedure, and by no means suitable to the rendition

of Beethoven's Eroica.

But to Lanny it seemed more important to try to understand what the composer of that noble

symphony was trying to tell him than to worry about details of somebody's rendition. The last

time Lanny had heard this work had been with the Robin family in Berlin, and he recalled

Freddi's gentle raptures. Freddi wasn't one of those musicians who have heard so much music

that they have got tired of it, and can think about nothing but technicalities and personalities and

other extraneous matters. Freddi loved Beethoven as if he had been the composer's son; but

now father and son had been torn apart. Freddi wasn't fit to play Beethoven, by Heinrich's

decree, because he was a Jew; and certainly he wasn't having any chance to hear Beethoven in

Dachau. Lanny could think of little else, and the symphony became an appeal to the great

master for a verdict against those who were usurping his influence and his name.

In Beethoven's works there is generally a forceful theme that tramples and thunders, and a

gentle theme that lilts and pleads. You may take it as pleading for mercy and love against the

cruelties and oppressions of the world. You may take it that the grim, dominating theme

represents these cruelties, or perhaps it represents that which rises in your own soul to oppose

them. Anyhow, to Lanny the opening melody of the Eroica became the "Freddi theme," and

Beethoven was defending it against the hateful Nazis. The great democrat of old Vienna came

into the Tonhalle of Munich and laid his hand on Lanny's burning forehead, and told him

that he was right, and that he and his Jewish friend were free to march with Beethoven on

the battlefields of the soul and to dance with him on the happy meadows.

Was it conceivable that Beethoven would have failed to despise the Nazis, and to defy them?

He had dedicated his symphony to Napoleon because he believed that Napoleon represented the

liberating forces of the French revolution, and he had torn up the title page of his score when

he learned that Napoleon had got himself crowned Emperor of France. He had adopted

Schiller's Hymn to Joy, sending a kiss to the whole world and proclaiming that all men

became brothers where the gentle wing of joy came to rest. Very certainly he had not meant

to exclude the Jews from the human race, and would have spurned those who built their

movement out of hate.

That was what this urgent music was about; that was what gave it drive and intensity. The

soul of Beethoven was defending itself, it was defending all things German from those who

would defile them. The "Freddi theme" pleaded, it stormed and raged, heaving itself in mighty

efforts as the kettledrums thundered. The young idealist had told his friends that he wasn't

sure if he had within him the moral strength to withstand his foes; but here in this symphony

he was finding it; here he would prevail, and rejoice-but then would come the rushing hordes