WORLD'S END

the main highway along the shore, becoming ever more crowded with traffic, so that the authorities were talking about widening and improving it; but to get things done took a long time in a land of bureaucracy. The traveler passed scenes of great natural beauty, embellished with advertisements of brandies, cigars, and mineral waters. You wound upward into the Estиrels, where the landscape was red and the road dangerous. Then came the Maures, still rougher mountains; in the old days they had been full of bandits, but now disorder had been banished from the world, and bandits appeared only in grand opera.

Pierre Bazoche was a swarthy, good-looking fellow of peasant origin, who had entered the service of Mrs. Budd many years ago and seemed unaffected by contact with wealth; he put on his uniform and drove the car whenever that was desired, and the rest of the time he wore his smock and cut the dead wood which the mistral blew down. He spoke French with a strong accent of Provence, and pretended that he didn't know English; but Lanny saw the flicker of a smile now and then, which led him to believe that Pierre was wiser than he let on. Like all French servants - those in the country, at any rate - he had adopted the family, and expressed his opinions with a freedom which gave surprise to visitors.

Pierre Bazoche and Lanny were fast friends, and chatted all the way. The boy was curious about everything he saw, and the chauffeur was proud of his responsibility, having been cautioned many times and made many promises. He could tell the legends of the district, while Lanny dispensed historical information from the guidebook. Toulon, the great French naval base: Lanny read statistics as to the number of ships and their armament, and wondered if any of it had come from Budd's.

The journey wasn't much more than a hundred miles, but cars were not so fast in those days, nor was the highway built for speed. When they got to the Quai du Port, the ship Pharaoh wasn't in sight yet, so they went to a waterfront cafe and ate fried cuttlefish and endives, and then strolled and watched the sights of one of the great ports of the world, with ships and sailors from the seven seas. If the pair had ventured into side streets, they would have found a "cabbage patch" of vast dimensions; but such places were dangerous, and they had promised to stay on the main avenues and never under any circumstances become separated.

II

The steamer was warped up to the quay, and there was Robbie waving, looking brown and handsome in a white linen suit. Presently they were settled in the back seat of the car, both of them beaming with happiness and the boy talking fast. Robbie wouldn't discuss business until they were alone, but Lanny told about his visit to Germany, including even the Social-Democratic editor, now six weeks in the past. Robbie took that seriously, and confirmed his son's idea that Social-Democrats were fully as reprehensible as anarchists;, maybe they didn't use bombs, but they provided the soil in which bombs grew, the envy and hatred which caused unbalanced natures to resort to violence.

"I'm on another deal," the father said. "There's a big man staying on the Riviera and I have to convince him that the Budd ground-type air-cooled machine gun is the best." That was all he would say until next day, when he and his son went sailing. Out in the wide Golfe Juan, with little waves slapping the side of the boat, "That's my idea of privacy!" laughed the representative of Budd Gunmakers Corporation. Anchored here and there in the bay were the gray French warships, also keeping their own secrets. Lanny would keep his father's, as he had been so carefully trained to do.

There was another crisis in the affairs of Europe, Robbie reported; one of those underground wars in which diplomats wrestled with one another, making dire threats, always, of course, in polished French. It didn't mean much, in the father's opinion; the story of Europe was just one crisis after another. Three years back there had been a severe one over the Agadir question, and that had broken into the press; but now the wise and powerful ones were keeping matters to themselves, a far safer and more sensible way.

It was a game of bluffing, and one form it took was ordering the means to make good your threats; so came harvest-time for the ·munitions people. When Russia heard that Austria was equipping its army with field-guns that could shoot faster and farther, the Russians would understand that Austria was getting in position to demand that Russia should stop her arming of Serbia. So then, of course, the munitions people, who had sold field-guns to Russia and Serbia two years ago, would come hurrying to St. Petersburg and Belgrade to show what improvements they had been able to devise since that time.