Lola Montez

era, then under the management of Léon Pillet. The power behind the throne was the great Madame Stoltz, who some years later was to be hooted off the stage by a hostile clique j

ckiest in men's parts, and therefore sa

this, Lola made a characteristic bid for their favour. Her satin shoe had slipped off. Seizing it, she threw it with one of her superb gestures into the boxes, where it was pounced upon and brandished as a precious relic by a gentleman of fashion. The man?uvre seems to have succeeded

bbles Spanish very indifferently, French hardly at all, and English passably [sic]. Which is her country? That is the question. We may say that Mlle. Lola has a little foot and pretty legs. Her use of these is another matter. The curiosity excited by her adventures with the northern police, and her conversations, à coups de cravache, with the Prussian gens d'armes, has not been sat

r as I can learn, she was out of an engagement. She had, no doubt, made some money during her German and Ru

nor poets, daily appeared on his balcony to acknowledge the homage of the public; Lamartine was dividing his attention between politics and literature. Alfred de Musset was wrecking his constitution by spasms of debauchery. Balzac was dodging his creditors, playing truant from the National Guard, and finding time to write his "Comédie Humaine"; Théophile Gautier, a man of thirty-three, if he had not yet received the full meed of his genius, was already well known and widely a

ourished and the world was gay. Those days before the Revolution remind us of that strange picture in our National Gallery, "The Eve of the Deluge." Paris, as the old stagers regretfully assure us, was Paris then, and not the caravanserai of all the nations of the world. The good Americans who died then, had they gone to Paris, would have thought they

aurants where they used to dine, the stalls and boxes where they used to assist at the opera and the play, we

er diminished in volume, and the

ety was in undisputed possession of the Boulevard

aim to some sort of distinction or originality. There seemed to exist a kind of invisible moral barrier, closing this area again

to be seen there twice or thrice a week; the eccentric Lord Seymour, founder of the French Jockey Club, had his own table there. Lola, doubtless, often tasted th

n (who indeed

s white, her wavy hair like the tendrils of the woodbine, her eyes tameless and wild, her mouth like a budding pomegranate. Add

om the truth. Only three years had elapsed since Lola had shone in Court circles in India, where the social atmosphere was not that of a bar-room; and since then she had been wandering about in countries where her ignorance of the language must have left her manner of speech and m

The lady had fascinated him while she was interpreting a r?le of his creation at the Porte-St.-Martin. It did not strike him that it would be irregular to take her with him to a ball given by his patron, the Duke of Orleans, and he straightway did so. "Of course, my dear Dumas," said His Highness affably, "it is only your wife that you would think of presenting to me." Poor Alexandre, the lover of all women and none in particular, was hoisted with his own petard. A prince's hints, above all when he is your patron and publisher, are commands. Dumas was led to the altar, like a sheep to the slaughter, by the charming Ida. Chateaubriand

E DUMAS,

eatment of Frederick William's policemen, and with what far-fetched compliments he followed up this commendation it is easy to imagine. There were certain resemblances in their

of Grados, at the Barrière Montparnasse, and, attired as a postilion, the great man danced all night without resting for a moment, and held women with his outstretched arm, like a Hercules. When he returned home in the morning, he found that his postilion's breeches had, through the swelling of the muscles, become impossible to remove; so Alexandre was obliged to cu

she turns out poets, who, having composed a single sonnet, pass th

d the son, "is so vain that he would be ready to hang on to the back of his own carriage, to make people believe he kept a black servant." Notwithstanding, the two loved each other tenderly. Innumerable anecdote

her everything, such has been our device. We have lost, it seems, several hundred thousands of francs; but this we have gained-the power of counting a

Englishman would have put such langua

most celebrated work in the pale, flower-like courtesan, Alphonsine Plessis, who shared with Lola the devotion of the erotic Boulevard. The two were women of very different stamp. The Irish woman confronted the world with head erect and flashing eyes; the Lady of the Camellias, with a blush and trembling lips. They were typical of two