raisins. A Danish proverb says that he who knows what he is saying at a feast has but poor comprehension of what he is eating. On my way hither, breakfasting at Strasburg, I enjoyed a lesson in geography, and I aver that though the lesson was elementary, I breakfasted very badly."

Delights of the Verlobten.

"Who was the teacher?" asked the explorer of Wyoming, a German, in the tone of a man to whom no professor of Geography could properly be a stranger.

"The teacher," I answered with a smile, "was one Fortnoye—"

I did not finish my sentence. At that name, Fortnoye, a kind of electric movement was communicated around the board. Every eye sought the face of Francine, who, troubled and confused, fell upon the cutlet placed before her and cut it feverishly into flinders. Evidently there was a secret thereabouts. When coffee was on, I applied myself to satisfying the topographic doubts of my neighbors, but the name of the geographical professor was approached no more.

When dinner was over, and only two stranded Belgians remained at table, discussing whether the Falls of Niagara plunge from the United States into Canada, or from Canada into the United States, I stole into the narrow office, believing I should see Francine.

She was not there, but the register was lying on the desk. I fell to turning the leaves over furiously: I felt that I was on the trail of Fortnoye. I was not long in amassing a quantity of discoveries. Going back to the previous year, I found the signature of Fortnoye in March and April; in July and September, Fortnoye bound up and down the Rhine; in the depth of the winter, Monsieur Tonson-Fortnoye come again! Evidently one of the most frequent guests of my delicate Francine was the interpreter of Cosmos in Strasburg, the white-bearded mystifier of the champagne-cellar, the finest singing-voice in Épernay.

The Churchyard Lover.

Toward ten o'clock, as I paced the little grove called the Oak Wood, I saw at the miniature lake four persons, who were regaining the bank after trying to detach the little boat moored by the shore. They were just the four from our social table with whom I best agreed. I joined the party, and, hooking now a friendly arm to the elbow of one, now to that of another, I soon obtained all they had to communicate on the subject which occupied my mind. Each knew Fortnoye intimately: the result of my quadratic amounted to the following:

First. Fortnoye, educated at the Polytechnic School in Paris, is a man of grave character and profound learning.

Second. Fortnoye is a roysterer, latterly occupied in extending the connection of a champagne-house at Épernay. He is a Bohemian, even a poet: he can rhyme, but strictly in the interests of commerce—he composes only drinking-songs.

Third. Fortnoye is an exploded speculator, dismissed from the French Board: obliged to beat a retreat to Belgium, he soon found himself in Baden, where he had good luck at the green table shortly before the war.

Fourth, and last. (This was from the man of Wyoming.) Fortnoye only retreated to Belgium as a refuge for his demagogic opinions. He belongs to the innermost circle of the Commune and to all the French and Italian secret associations. He is represented in the background of several of Courbet's pictures. He has been everywhere: in Italy he joined the society of the Mary Anne, where he met the celebrated Lothair. This order has a branch called the Society of Pure Illumination. If he has liberty to return into France, it is 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."

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