“‘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 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.