oyal, brave--a
kind which makes good fathers and good soldiers--how many a hundred are
mourned since 1870-71!

He had fallen in love with a little stout dumpy _Maedchen_, honest and
open as himself, but stupid in all outside domestic matters. She was
evidently desperately in love with him, and could understand a good
waltz or a sentimental song, so that his musical talents were not
altogether thrown away. I liked her better after a time. There was
something touching in the way in which she said to me once:

"He might have done so much better. I am such an ugly, stupid thing, but
when he said did I love him or could I love him, or something like that,
_um Gotteswillen_, Herr Helfen, what could I say?"

"I am sure you did the best possible thing both for him and for you," I
was able to say, with emphasis and conviction.

Karl had now become a completely reformed and domesticated member of
society; now he wore the frock-coat several times a week, and confided
to me that he thought he must have a new one soon. Now too did other
strange results appear of his engagement to Fraeulein Clara (he got
sentimental and called her Claerchen sometimes). He had now the _entree_
of Frau Steinmann's house and there met feminine society several degrees
above that to which he had been accustomed. He was obliged to wear a
permanently polite and polished manner (which, let me hasten to say, was
not the least trouble to him). No chaffing of these young ladies--no
offering to take them to places of amusement of any but the very
sternest and severest respectability.

He took Fraeulein Clara out for walks. They jogged along arm in arm, Karl
radiant, Clara no less so, and sometimes they were accompanied by
another inmate of Frau Steinmann's house--a contrast to them both. She
lived _en famille_ with her hostess, not having an income large enough
to admit of indulging in quite separate quarters, and her name was Anna
Sartorius.

It was very shortly after his engagement that Karl began to talk to me
about Anna Sartorius. She was a clever young woman, it seemed--or as he
called her, a _gescheidtes Maedchen_. She could talk most wonderfully.
She had traveled--she had been in England and France, and seen the
world, said Karl. They all passed very delightful evenings together
sometimes, diversified with music and song and the racy jest--at which
times Frau Steinmann became quite another person, and he, Karl, felt
himself in heaven.

The substa