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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