"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