A tumultuous crowd of Poles escorted her to her lodgings that night.  She was the heroine of the hour, who had dared to give open defiance to the hated Viceroy.  The next morning Warsaw was “bubbling and raging with the signs of an incipient revolution.  When Lola Montez was apprised of the fact that her arrest was ordered she barricaded her door; and when the police arrived she sat behind it with a pistol in her hand, declaring that she would certainly shoot the first man who should dare to break in.”  Fortunately for Lola, her pistol was not used.  The French Consul came to her rescue, claiming her as a subject of France, and thus protecting her from arrest.  But the order that she should quit Warsaw was peremptory, and Warsaw saw her no more.

Back again in Paris, Lola found that even her new halo of romance was powerless to win favour for her dancing.  Again she was to hear the storm of hisses; and this time in her rage “she retaliated by making faces at her audience,” and flinging parts of her clothing in their faces.  But if Paris was not to be charmed by her dainty feet it was ready to yield an unstinted homage to her rare beauty and charm.  She found a flattering welcome in the most exclusive of salons; the cleverest men in the capital confessed the charm of her wit and surrounded her with their flatteries.

M. Dujarrier, the most brilliant of them all, young, rich, and handsome, fell head over ears in love with her and asked her to be his wife.  But the cup of happiness was scarcely at her lips before it was dashed away.  Dujarrier was challenged to a duel by Beauvallon, a political enemy; and when Lola was on her way to stop the meeting she met a mournful procession bringing back her dead lover’s body, on which she flung herself in an agony of grief and covered it with kisses.  At the subsequent trial of Beauvallon she electrified the Court by declaring with streaming eyes, “If Beauvallon wanted satisfaction I would have fought him myself, for I am a better shot than poor Dujarrier ever was.”  And she was probably only speaking the truth, for her courage was as great as the love she bore for the victim of the duel.

As a child Lola had shocked her puritanical Scottish hosts by declaring that “she meant to marry a Prince,” and unkindly as fate had treated her, she had by no means relinquished this childish ambition.  It may be that it was in her mind when, a year and a half after the tragedy that had so clouded her life in Paris, she drifted to Munich in search of more conquests.

Now in the full bloom of her radiant loveliness—­“the most beautiful woman in Europe” many declared—­mingling the vivacity of an Irish beauty with the voluptuous charms of a Spaniard—­she was splendidly equipped for the conquest of any man, be he King or subject; and Ludwig I., King of Bavaria, had as keen an eye for female beauty as for the objects of art on which he squandered his millions.

It was this Ludwig who made Munich the fairest city in all Germany, and who enriched his palace with the finest private collection of pictures and statues that Europe can boast.  But among all his treasures of art he valued none more than his gallery of portraits of fair women, each of whom had, at one time or another, visited his capital.