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.