Lippincotts Magazine, December 1873 | Page 6

with flowers from the nearest
grave. In an hour the villagers from Ettlingen saw her leaning on Fritz's
shoulder in the waltz. That night the shade of Wilhelm stood at her
bed-head: 'You have accepted the flowers growing on my grave and
nourished from my heart. I am once more your verlobter.'
"Next day Fritz came, radiant, with a silver engagement-ring, which he
was to exchange for that on Bettina's finger, returned by Wilhelm at his
departure. But the ring was gone. At night Wilhelm reappeared, and
showed the ring on his finger. Some time passed, and Bettina lost a
good part of her beauty, distracted as she was between the laughing
Fritz in the daytime and the pale Wilhelm at night. She was a sensible
girl, however, and persuaded herself, with Fritz's assistance, that the
vision was created by a disordered fancy. But she caused inquiry to be
made about the grave in the cemetery at Durlach: the answer came:

'Under the first stone in the line at the right of the gate lies the body of
Wilhelm Haussbach of Ettlingen, where he followed the trade of baker.'
"Then she knew that she had robbed her lover's grave to adorn herself
for a new verlobter. After this the ghost of Wilhelm began to invade
her promenades with Fritz, and she walked evening after evening
beneath the chestnuts between her two lovers.
"The gardener's daughter never looked fairer than on her wedding-day.
Armed with all her resolution, and filled with love for Fritz, she
presented herself at the altar. The priest began to recite the sacramental
words, when he came to a pause at the sight of Bettina, pale and
wild-eyed, shivering convulsively in her bridal draperies.
"Wilhelm was again at her side, kneeling on the right, as Fritz on the
left. He was in bridegroom's habit, and he offered a bouquet of
graveyard-flowers--the white immortelle and the forget-me-not. When
Fritz rose and put the ring on her finger she felt an icy hand draw the
token off and replace it by another. At this, overcome with terror, and
making a wild gesture of rejection both to right and left, she ran
shrieking out of the church.
"Such is the true and authentic story of Bettina," concluded my narrator.
"You may see Bettina any day at Ettlingen, a yellow old maid forty
years of age. Every Sunday she goes to mass at Durlach, where she
employs the rest of the day in tending flowers on a grave, the first grave
in the line to the right of the gateway."
I returned to the house with this grim and tender little idyll crooning
through my brains. I took my key and bed-candle, and asked the porter
if a letter had arrived for me from Sylvester Berkley. Not a line! This
silence became inconvenient. Not only did I rely upon Berkley for my
passport, the certificate of my character, but likewise for the
revictualing of my purse. As I passed the small throne-room of
Francine, where she sat vis-à-vis with all her keys and bells, a light, a
presence, an amicable little nod informed me that a friend was there for
me, and sent a bath of warm and comfortable emotion all over my poor
old heart.

[Illustration: EFFUSION.]
It was late. Francine, at a little velvet account-book, was executing
some fairy-like and poetical arithmetic in purple ink. I had the pleasure,
before a half hour had passed, of making her commit more than one
error in her columns, do violet violence to the neatness of her book, and
adorn her thumb-nail with a comical tiny silhouette. My gossip, which
had this encouraging and proud effect, was commenced easily upon
familiar subjects, such as the old rose-garden and the chickens, but
branched imperceptibly into more personal confidences. I found myself
growing strangely confidential. Soon I had sketched for Francine my
life of opulent loneliness, my cook and my old valet, my philosopher's
den at Marly, my negligent existence at Paris, without family, country
or obligations.
Her good gray eyes were swimming with tears, I thought. With a look
of perfect natural sweetness she said, "To live alone and far from kin
and fatherland, that is not amusing. It is like one of the small straight
sticks of rose my father would take and plant in the sand in a far-away
little red pot."
A delicious vignette, I confess, began to be outlined in my fancy. I
cannot describe it, but I know Francine was in the middle repairing a
stocking, while my own books and geographical notes, in a state of
dustlessness they had never known actually, formed a brown bower
around her. Somewhere near, in an old secretary or in a grave, was
buried the ideal of an earlier, haughtier love; wrapped up