Lippincotts Magazine, December 1873 | Page 5

because he is connected with
the detective police.
The information, extensive as it was, did not altogether satisfy me. I
made little of the inconsistencies betrayed by the various counsels of
the Areopagus, but I closed the whole solemnity with one crucial
interrogatory: "What the dickens does Fortnoye come prowling around
Francine Joliet's house for?"
The answer was not calculated to please me: "She is young and
attractive: Fortnoye advanced the funds to set her up in the house."
But my morose thoughts were distracted by the scene around us. The
moon burst up above the trees of the Oak Wood--a fine ample German
moon, like a Diana of Rubens. Close to our sides passed numerous
young couples, holding hands, clasping waists, chattering gayly, or
walking in silence with a blonde head laid on a burly shoulder. One of
my companions pointed out a specially stalwart and graceful young
apprentice, whose elbow, supported on a rustic bench, was bent around
a mass of beautiful golden hair.
"An eligible _verlobter_," said he.
I thought of Perrette and the tall young man who had helped pull her
milk-cart. My friend continued: "Betrothal hereabouts is a serious
institution. The girl who loses her verlobter becomes a widow. Woe
betide her if she dreams of replacing him too early! She will find
herself followed by ill looks and contemptuous tongues: she even runs
the risk of having nobody to marry better than a dead man, if we may
believe the history of Bettina of Ettlingen."

"The history of Bettina of Ettlingen? That sounds like the title to a
ballad."
"It is a recent history, which you would take for a legend of the twelfth
century."
[Illustration: ON THE FIRST STEP.]
I cannot help it. In face of that word legend my mind stops and stares
rigidly like a pointer dog. The moment was favorable for a good story:
the sky was covered with flocked clouds, behind which the ample
German moon, shorn of half its brightness, took suddenly the pale
gilded tint of sauerkraut. The wandering lovers, half effaced in the
gloom, looked like straying shades in an Elysium.
"Ettlingen is between Carlsruhe and Rastadt, an hour's walking as you
go to Kehl. The flowers grow there without thinking about it, and sow
their own seed. It is therefore a simple thing to be a gardener, and
Bettina's father, the florist, attended entirely to his pipe, leaving the
cares of business to his apprentice, whose name was Nature. Bettina, as
became the daughter of a gardener, was a kind of rose: Wilhelm, the
baker's young man, would have thrown himself into the furnace for her.
But there came along Fritz, the dyer, who had been in France and who
wore gloves. She continued a while to promenade with Wilhelm under
the chestnut trees which surround the fortifications of Ettlingen, but
one night she suddenly withdrew her hand: 'You had better find a nicer
girl than I am: I do not feel that I could make you happy.' Wilhelm
disappeared from the country. His departure, which was the talk of
Ettlingen, caused Bettina more remorse than regret. For six months she
shut herself up: then, hearing nothing of her lover, she reappeared shyly
on the promenade, divested of rings, ear-drops and ornaments. The
beautiful Fritz, in his loveliest gloves, intercepted her beneath the
chestnuts, and, armed with her father's consent, proposed himself for
her verlobter.
"'Not yet,' she answered: 'wait till I wear my flowers again.'
"In Germany, as in Switzerland and Italy, natural flowers are

indispensable to a young girl's toilet. To appear at an assembly without
a blooming tuft at the corsage or in the hair is to indicate that the family
is in mourning, the mother sick or the lover conscripted.
[Illustration: THE LEGAL PROFESSION AND PROFESSION OF
FRIENDSHIP.]
"With an exquisite natural sense, Bettina, daughter of a gardener,
would never wear any flowers but wild ones. About this time there was
a grand fair at Durlach: almost all Ettlingen went there, and Bettina too,
but as spectatress only, and without her flowers.
"The dances which animated the others made her sad. She left the ball
and wandered on the hillside. There, beneath the hedge of a sunken
road, she recognized her beauteous Fritz. Poor Fritz! he was refusing
himself the pleasure of the dance which he might not partake with her.
Ah, the time for temporizing is over! Bettina determines that to-day, in
the eyes of every one, they shall dance together, and he shall be
recognized as her verlobter. She looks hastily around for flowers. The
hill is bare, the road is stony: an enclosure at the left offers some
promise, and Bettina enters.
"It was a cemetery. Animated with her new resolve, she thought little of
the profanation, and crowned herself