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the older ones mentioned it to their husbands, but the younger ones kept quiet, not wishing to

put any notions into anybody's head. No Rousseau in our family, thank you!

Hansi and Bess played Lalo's Symphonie Espagnole, a composition which audiences welcome

and which has to be in the repertoire of every virtuoso: a melancholy and moving andante over

which the ladies may sigh; a scherzando to which young hearts may dance over flower-strewn

meadows. It was no holiday for Bess, who wasn't sure if she was good enough for this

fastidious company; but she got through it all right and received her share of compliments.

Lanny, who knew the music well, permitted his eyes to roam over the audience, and wondered

what they were making of it, behind the well-constructed masks they wore. What to them was

the meaning of these flights of genius, these incessant calls to the human spirit, these unremitting

incitements to ecstasy? Whose feet were swift enough to trip among these meadows? Whose

spring was high enough to leap upon these mountain-tops? Who wept for these dying worlds?

Who marched in these triumphal processions, celebrating the birth of new epochs?

The thirty-year-old Lanny Budd had come to understand his world, and no longer cherished

any illusions concerning the ladies and gentlemen at a soiree musicale. Large, well-padded

matrons who had been playing bridge all afternoon, and had spent so many hours choosing the

fabrics, the jeweled slippers, the necklaces, brooches, and tiaras which made up their splendid

ensemble—what fairy feet did they have, even in imagination? What tears did they shed forthe

lost hopes of mankind? There was Beauty's friend, Madame de Sarce, with two marriageable

daughters and an adored only son who had squandered their fortune in the gambling-palaces.

Lanny doubted if any one of the family was thinking about music.

And these gentlemen, with their black coats and snowy shirt-fronts in which their valets had

helped to array them—what tumults of exultation thrilled their souls tonight? They had all

dined well, and more than one looked drowsy. Others fixed their eyes upon the smooth bare

backs of the ladies in front of them. Close to the musicians sat Graf Hohenstauffen, monocled

German financier, wearing a pleased smile all through the surging finale; Lanny had heard

him tell Johannes Robin that he had just come from a broker's office where he had got the

closing New York prices. In this April of 1930 there was a phenomenon under way which was

being called "the little bull market"; things were picking up again, and the speculators were full

of enthusiasms. Was the Graf converting Hansi's frenzied rans on the violin into movements of

stocks and bonds? However, there might be somebody who understood, some lonely heart that

hid its griefs and lived in secret inner happiness. Someone who sat silent and abstracted after the

performance, too shy to approach the players and thank them; who would go out with fresh

hopes for a world in which such loveliness had been embodied in sound. In any case, Hansi

and Bess had done their duty by their hostess, a white-haired grande dame who would always

seem wonderful to them because it was in her chateau near Paris that they had met and been

revealed each to the other.

VIII

It was considered a social triumph, but it was not sufficient for young people tinged with all

the hues between pink and scarlet. In the Old Town of Cannes, down near the harbor, dwelt

members of depressed classes, among whom Lanny had been going for years, teaching his ideas in

a strange, non-religious Sunday school, helping with his money to found a center of what was

called "workers' education." He had made many friends here, and had done all he could to

break down the social barriers. As a result, the waiter in some fashionable cafe would say: "Bon

soir, Comrade Lanny!" When he got out of his car to enter the Casino, or the Cercle Nautique,

or some other smart place, he would be delayed by little street urchins running up to shake

hands or even to throw their arms about him.

What would these people feel if they knew that the famous violinist who was Lanny's brother-

in-law had come to town and given a recital for the rich but had neglected the poor?

Unthinkable to go sailing off in a luxurious pleasure yacht without even greeting the class-

conscious workers! Lanny's Socialist friend Raoul Palma, who conducted the school, had been

notified of the expected visit, and had engaged a suitable hall and printed leaflets for the little

street urchins to distribute. When Hansi Robin played in concert halls the rich paid as much

as a hundred francs to hear him, but the workers would hear him for fifty centimes, less than a

cent and a half in American money. From the point of view of Hansi's business manager it was

terrible; but Hansi was a rich man's son and must be allowed to have his eccentricities.

Wherever he went, the word would spread, and working-class leaders would come and beg his

help. He was young and strong, and wanted to practice anyway, so why not do it on a platform

for this most appreciative kind of audience?

Perhaps it was because they knew he was a "comrade," and read into his music things which

were not there. Anyhow, they made a demonstration out of it, they took him to their hearts,

they flew with him upon the wings of song to that happy land of the future where all men would

be brothers and poverty and war only an evil mem ory. Hansi played no elaborate composition

for them, he performed no technical feats; he played simple, soul-warming music: the adagio from

one of the Bach solo sonatas, followed by Scriabin's Prelude, gently solemn, with very lovely

double-stopping. Then he added bright and gay things: Percy Grainger's arrangement of Molly

on the Shore, and when they begged for more he led them into a riot with Bazzini's Goblins'

Dance. Those goblins squeaked and squealed, they gibbered and chattered; people had never

dreamed that such weird sounds could come out of a violin or anything else, and they could

hardly contain their laughter and applause until the goblins had fled to their caverns or

wherever they go when they have worn themselves out with dancing.

When it was late, and time to quit, Bess struck the opening chords of the Internationale. It is

the work of a Frenchman, and, pink or scarlet or whatever shade in between, everybody in that

crowded hall seemed to know the words; it was as if a charge of electricity had passed through

the chairs on which they sat. They leaped to their feet and burst into singing, and you could no

longer hear the violin. "Arise, ye prisoners of starvation; arise, ye wretched of the earth!" The

workers crowded about the platform, and if Hansi had let them they would have carried him,

and Lanny, and Bess too, out to their car, and perhaps have hauled the car all the way to the

Cap d'Antibes.

IX

The trim white Bessie Budd crept slowly beyond the breakwater of Cannes and through the

Golfe Juan, passing that group of buildings with the red-tiled roofs which had been Lanny

Budd's home since his earliest memory. Now for several months the yacht was to be his home.

It carried five members and a small fraction of the Robin family—if that be the way to count an

infant—and four members and two fractions of the Budd family: Lanny, his wife, and their baby;