The Razor's Edge

Nearing mid-summer, Larry and Kosti find a farmer, Herr Becker, who is willing to take them on as laborers. The farmer’s wife, Frau Becker, is attracted to Larry. Becker’s widowed daughter-in-law, Ellie, also lives in the house, and the women despise each other. One night, Larry is asleep in his bed in the hayloft when he feels a soft body pressed against him. He assumes it is Frau Becker. Larry doesn’t want to make a scene or hurt her feelings, and he is a healthy young man with all the usual instincts, so he does what he feels is expected of him and has sex with her.

After the woman leaves, Larry realizes she wasn’t Frau Becker but Ellie, who is likely to make trouble for him just to spite Frau Becker. Without waking Kosti, Larry shoves his few belongings into his rucksack and strikes out on his own, walking alone through the dark night until, at dawn, he comes to the next village.

After Larry’s departure, Isabel marries Gray Maturin in June about the same time Larry is tramping through Germany. They have two children, and Gray’s father makes him a partner in the firm. Elliott likens them to the merchant princes of the Italian Renaissance and predicts that someday, the royalty of Europe will think nothing of marrying American “dollar princesses” (that is, daughters of American millionaires).

In Europe, society has changed. The wealthy and illustrious people whom Elliott once knew are gone. The young glitterati who have taken their place find him insignificant and ridiculous, and the people he’d helped to get on in society now look down their noses at him. Elliott is taken aback to find himself at parties, rubbing elbows with such low persons as politicians, journalists, and descendants of aristocratic families who have stooped to marry shopkeepers’ daughters. It is no longer the Paris that Elliott loved.

Elliott’s investments have doubled in value in the last few years. His assets are managed by Henry Maturin. Henry has been convinced by his son Gray to invest more aggressively in the rapidly expanding market. Fortunately for Elliott, his friends at the Vatican forewarn him of the coming stock market crash. Trusting in the infallibility of the Church, he immediately sells out. With the profits, he leaves the declining society of Paris and buys a house on the French Riviera. There, he entertains the royalty of Europe in great magnificence and the best of taste. That is the state of things when the New York stock market collapses in October 1929.

With the market crash, the Maturins and Elliott’s sister are financially wiped out. Unable to find work as a broker in the wake of the crash, Gray has a “nervous breakdown” with debilitating headaches. Elliott offers them the use of his Paris apartment with all their expenses paid.