would take it into his head to stop this Jewish swine from profaning German music?
Lanny wrote, begging Hansi to come to Paris. He wrote to Bess, who admitted that she was
afraid; but she was a granddaughter of the Puritans, who hadn't run away from the Indians.
She pointed out that she and her husband had helped to make Communists in Berlin, and now
to desert them in the hour of trial wouldn't be exactly heroic, would it? Lanny argued that a
great artist was a special kind of being, different from a fighting man and not to be held to the
military code. Lanny wrote to Mama, telling her that it was her business to take charge of the
family in a time like this. But it wasn't so easy to manage Red children as it had been in the
days of Moses and the Ten Commandments.
However, there was still a Providence overseeing human affairs. At this moment it came
about that a certain Italian diva, popular in Paris, was struck by a taxicab. The kind
Providence didn't let her be seriously hurt, just a couple of ribs broken, enough to put her out
of the diva business for a while. The news appeared in the papers while Lanny and Irma were
at Bienvenu, having run down to see the baby and to attend one of Emily's social functions.
Lanny recalled that the diva was scheduled with one of the Paris symphony orchestras; she
would have to be replaced, and Lanny asked Emily to get busy on the long distance telephone.
She knew the conductor of this orchestra, and suggested Hansi Robin to replace the damaged
singer; Mrs. Chattersworth being a well-known patron of the arts, it was natural that she
should offer to contribute to the funds of the symphony society an amount equal to the fee
which Hansi Robin would expect to receive.
The bargain was struck, and Lanny got to work on Hansi at some twenty francs per minute,
to persuade him that German music ought to be promoted in France; that every such
performance was a service to world culture, also to the Jewish race, now so much in need of
international sympathy. After the Paris appearance, Emily would have a soiree at Sept Chênes,
and other engagements would help to make the trip worth while.
"All right," replied the violinist, anxious to cut short the expendi ture of francs. "I'm
scheduled to give a concert at Cologne, and that is half way."
Lanny said: "For God's sake, keep off the streets at night, and don't go out alone!"
VI
Lanny missed his inside news about Germany, because the government forbade the
publication of Vorwärts for three days, as a punishment for having published a campaign appeal
of the Social-Democratic Party. Communist meetings were forbidden throughout the whole
nation, and many Communist and Socialist papers were permanently suspended. "In ten years
there will be no Marxism in Germany," proclaimed the Führer. All over Prussia Goring was
replacing police chiefs with Nazis, and the Stormtroopers were now attending political
meetings in force, stopping those in which the government was criticized. Next, all meetings of
the Centrists, the Catholic party, were banned; the Catholic paper, Germania, of which
Papen was the principal stockholder, was suppressed, and then Rote Fahne, the Communist
paper of Berlin. These events were reported in L'Humanite under the biggest of headlines, and
Uncle Jesse denounced them furiously in the Chamber of Deputies; but that didn't appear to
have much effect upon Hitler.
What the Nazis were determined to do was to win those elections on the fifth of March. If
they could get a majority in the Reichstag, they would be masters of the country; the
Nationalists and aristocrats would be expelled from the cabinet and the revolution would be
complete. Papen, Hugenberg, and their backers knew it well, and were in a state of distress,
according to Johannes's reports. A curious state of affairs—the gentlemen of the Herren Klub
defending the Reds, because they knew that Hitler was using the Red bogy to frighten the
people into voting for him! Goebbels was demanding the head of the Berlin police chief
because he wouldn't produce evidence of treasonable actions on the part of the Communists.
"The history of Germany is becoming a melodrama," wrote the Jewish financier. "In times to
come people will refuse to believe it."
He was now beginning to be worried about the possibility of attacks upon his boys; those
gentle, idealistic boys who had been playing with fire without realizing how hot it could get.
Being now twenty-eight and twenty-six respectively, they ought to have had some sense.
Johannes didn't say it was Lanny's half-sister who led them into the worst extremes, but
Lanny knew the father thought this, and not without reason. Anyhow, he had got a trusted
bodyguard in the palace—a well-established and indubitable Aryan bodyguard. Freddi's school
had been closed; such a simple operation—a group of Stormtroopers appeared one evening
and ordered the people out. Nothing you could do, for they had arms and appeared eager to
use them. Everybody went, not even being allowed to get their hats and coats in February. The
building was closed, and all the papers had been carted away in a truck.
The Nazis wouldn't find any treason in those documents; only receipted bills, and examination
papers in Marxist theory. But maybe that was treason now! Or maybe the Nazis would prepare
other documents and put them into the files. Orders to the students to blow up Nazi
headquarters, or perhaps the Chancellery? Such forgeries had been prepared more than once,
and not alone in Germany. Hadn't an election been won in Britain on the basis of an alleged
"Zinoviev letter"?
The headquarters of the Communist Party of Germany was in Karl Liebknecht Haus, and
that was the place where treason was to be sought. The police had seized the documents, and
two days later Herr Goebbels's press service gave details about "catacombs" and "underground
vaults," a secret and illegal organization functioning in the basement of the building, and so
on. Johannes reported an embittered conflict in the Cabinet over these too obvious forgeries;
they were considered beneath the dignity of the German government—but perhaps the
German government wasn't going to be so dignified from now on! The Jewish financier
couldn't conceal his amusement over the discomfiture of the "gentleman jockey," the "silver
fox," and the rest of the Junker crew. They had made this bed of roses, and discovered too
late how full of thorns it was.
The thing that worried Lanny was the possibility that some Nazi agent might produce
letters proving that Hansi Robin had been carrying dynamite in his violin case, or Freddi in his
clarinet case. They must have had spies in the school, and known everything that both boys
had been doing and saying. Lanny said; "Johannes, why don't you and the whole family come
visit us for a while?"
"Maybe we'll all take a yachting trip," replied the man of money, with a chuckle. "When the
weather gets a little better."
"The weather is going to get worse," insisted the Paris end of the line.
VII
Lanny talked this problem over with his wife. She couldn't very well refuse hospitality to
Johannes, from whom she had accepted so much. But she didn't like the atmosphere which
the young Robins brought with them, and she thought them a bad influence for her husband.
She argued that the danger couldn't really be so great as Lanny feared. "If the Nazis are
anxious to get votes, they won't do anything to important persons, especially those known
abroad."
Lanny replied: "The party is full of criminals and degenerates, and they, are drunk with the
sense of power."
He couldn't stop worrying about it, and when the day for Hansi's coming drew near, he said
to Irma: "How would you like to motor to Cologne and bring them out with us?"
"What could we do, Lanny?"
"There's safety in numbers; and then, too, Americans have a certain amount of prestige in
Germany."
It wasn't a pleasant time for motoring, the end of February, but they had heat in their car,
and with fur coats they would be all right unless there happened to be a heavy storm. Irma
liked adventure; one of the reasons she and Lanny got along so well was that whenever one
suggested hopping into a car the other always said: "O.K." No important engagement stood in
the way of this trip, and they allowed themselves an extra day on chance of bad weather.
Old Boreas was kind, and they rolled down the valley of the Meuse, by which the Germans
had made their entry into France some eighteen and a half years ago. Lanny told his wife the
story of Sophie Timmons, Baroness de la Tourette, who had been caught in the rush of the
armies and had got away in a peasant's cart pulled by a spavined old horse.
They reached Cologne late that evening, and spent the next day looking at a grand cathedral,
and at paintings in a near-by Gothic museum. Hansi and Bess arrived on the afternoon train,
and thereafter they stayed in their hotel suite, doing nothing to attract attention to a member
of the accursed race. Among the music-lovers Hansi would be all right, for these were "good
Europeans," who for a couple of centuries had been building up a tradition of
internationalism. A large percentage of Europe's favorite musicians had been Jews, and there
would have been gaps in concert programs if their works had been omitted.
Was the audience trying to say this by the storms of applause with which they greeted the
performance of Mendelssohn's gracious concerto by a young Jewish virtuoso? Did Hansi have
such a message in his mind when he played Bruch's Kol Nidrei as one of his encores? When
the audience leaped to its feet and shouted, "Bravo!" were they really meaning to say: "We are
not Nazis! We shall never be Nazis!" Lanny chose to believe this, and was heartened; he was
sure that many of the adoring Rheinlanders had a purpose in waiting at the stage door and
escorting the four young people to their car. But out in the dark street, with a cold rain
falling, doubts began to assail him, and he wondered if the amiable Rhinelanders had guns for
their protection.
However, no Nazi cars followed, and no Stormtroopers were waiting at the Hotel Monopol.
Next morning they drove to the border, and nobody searched Hansi's two violin cases for
dynamite. They went through the routine performance of declaring what money they were
taking out of the country, and were then passed over to the Belgian customs men. Lanny
remembered the day when he had been ordered out of Italy, and with what relief he had
seen French uniforms and heard French voices. Eight years had passed, and Benito, the
"Blessed Little Pouter Pigeon," was still haughtily declaring that his successor had not yet been
born. Now his feat was being duplicated in another and far more powerful land, and rumors
had it that he was giving advice. In how many more countries would Lanny Budd see that
pattern followed? How many more transformations would it undergo? Would the Japanese
conquerors of Manchuria adopt some new-colored shirts or kimonos? Or would it be the Croix
de Feu in France? Or Mosley's group in England? And if so, to what part of the world would
the lovers of freedom move?
VIII
The tall slender figure of Hansi Robin stood before the audience in the symphony hall; an
audience of fastidious Parisians whose greeting was reserved. In the front row sat Lanny,
Irma, and Bess, greatly excited. Hansi's appearance was grave and his bows dignified; he
knew that this performance was an important one, but was not too nervous, having learned
by now what he could do. The conductor was a Frenchman who had given a long life to the
service of the art he loved; his hair had grown white, and what was left of it stood out as a
fringe under his shiny bald pate. He tapped upon the edge of his stand and raised his baton;
there came four beats of the kettledrum, followed by a few notes of a timid marching song;
then four more beats, and more notes. It was Beethoven's violin concerto.
Hansi stood waiting, with his instrument in the crook of his arm and his bow at his side; the
introduction is elaborate, and not even by a movement of his eyes would he distract anyone's
attention from the sounds. Lanny Budd, in the front row with his wife and Bess, knew every
note of this composition, and had played a piano transcription of the orchestral part for Hansi at
Les Forêts, on that fateful day seven years ago when Bess had first met the shepherd boy out of
ancient Judea and fallen under his spell. That was one reason why Hansi made a specialty of
this concerto; love infused his rendition, as love has a way of doing with whatever it touches.
The march acquired the firm tread of Beethoven; the orchestra thundered, and Lanny
wanted to say: "Careful, Maestro. He didn't have so many instruments!" But the conductor's
expressive hands signed for gentleness as Hansi's bow touched the strings. The song floated
forth, gay yet tender, gentle yet strong-those high qualities which the soul of Beethoven
possessed and which the soul of Hansi honored. The fiddle sang and the orchestra made
comments upon it; various instruments took up the melody, while Hansi wove embroidery
about it, danced around it, over and under it, leaping, skipping, flying in feats of gay
acrobatics. A concerto is a device to exhibit the possibilities of a musical instrument; but at its
best it may also illustrate the possibilities of the human spirit, its joys and griefs, toils and
triumphs, glories and grandeurs. Men and women plod through their daily routine, they
become tired and insensitive, skeptical or worse; then comes a master spirit and flings open
the gates of their being, and they realize how much they have been missing in their lives.
For more than twenty years this sensitive young Jew had consecrated himself to one special
skill; he had made himself a slave to some pieces of wood, strips of pig's intestine, and hairs
from a horse's tail. With such unlikely agencies Beethoven and Hansi contrived to express the
richness, elegance, and variety of life. They took you into the workshop of the universe,
