III
On arriving in Munich, Lola called on the manager of the Hof Theatre. As this individual already knew of her Paris fiasco, instead of an engagement from him, she met with a rebuff. Quite undisturbed, however, by such an experience, she hurried off to the palace, and commanded the astonished door-keeper to take her straight to the King.
The flunkey referred her to Count Rechberg, the aide-de-camp on duty. With him Lola had more success. Boldness conquered where bashfulness would have failed. After a single swift glance, Count Rechberg decided that the applicant was eligible for admission to the "Presence," and reported the fact to his master.
But Ludwig already knew something of the candidate for terpsichorean honours. As it happened, that very morning he had received from Herr Frays, the director of the Hof Theatre, a letter, telling him that, on the advice of his première-danseuse, Fräulein Frenzal, he had refused to give her an engagement. Count Rechberg's florid description of her charms, however, decided His Majesty to use his own judgment. But he did not give in easily.
"Is it suggested," he demanded acidly, "that I should receive all these would-be ballerinas and put them through their paces? They come here by the dozen. Why am I troubled with such nonsense?"
"Sire," returned Rechberg, greatly daring, but with Lola's magnetism still upon him, "you will not regret it. I assure you this one is an exception. She is delightful. That is the only word for it. Never have I seen anybody to equal her. Such grace, such charm, such ——"
"Pooh!" interrupted Ludwig, cutting short the threatened rhapsodies, "your swan is probably a goose. Most of them are. Still, now that she's here, let her come in. If she isn't any good, I'll soon send her about her business."
Brave words, but they availed him nothing. Ludwig shot one glance at the woman who stood before him, and capitulated utterly.
A sudden thrill passed through him. His sixty years fell away in a flash. A river of blood surged through his sexagenarian arteries. His boast recoiled upon himself. Rechberg had not deceived him.
"What has happened to me?" he muttered feebly. "I am bewitched." Then, as the newcomer stood smiling at him in all her warm loveliness, he found his tongue.
"Mademoiselle, you say you can dance. Well, let me see what you can do. Count Rechberg, you may leave us."
"Do I dance here, in this room, Your Majesty?"
"Certainly."
Lola wanted nothing better. The opportunity for which she had been planning and scheming ever since she left Paris had come at last. Well, she would make the most of it. Not in the least perturbed that there was no accompaniment, and no audience but His Majesty, she executed a pas seul there and then. It was a "royal performance," and eminently successful. Her feet tripped lightly across the polished floor, and danced their way straight into Ludwig's heart.
"You shall dance before the public," he announced. "I will myself give orders to the director of the Hof Theatre."
Luise von Kobell, when a schoolgirl, encountered her by chance just after her arrival, and thus records the impression she received:
As I was walking in the Briennerstrasse, not far from the Bayersdorf Palace, I saw a veiled lady, wearing a black gown and carrying a fan, coming towards me. Something flashed across my vision, and I suddenly stood still, completely dazzled by the eyes into which I stared, and which shone from a pale countenance that lit up with a laughing expression at my bewilderment. Then she swept past me; and I, forgetting what my governess had said about looking round, stared after her until she disappeared.... "That," said my father, when I reached home and recounted my adventure, "must have been Lola Montez, the Spanish dancer."
The next evening little Fräulein von Kobell saw her again at the Hof Theatre, where her first appearance before the Munich public was made on October 10, 1846.
Lola Montez assumed the centre of the stage. She was not dressed in the customary tights and short skirts of a ballerina, but in a Spanish costume of silk and lace, in which shone at intervals a diamond. It seemed as if fire darted from her wonderful blue eyes, and she bowed like one of the Graces at the King in the royal box. She danced after the manner of her country, bending on her hips and alternating one posture with another, each rivalling the former one in beauty.
While she was dancing she held the attention of all; everybody's eyes followed her sinuous movements, now indicative of glowing passion, now of frolicsomeness. Not until she ceased her rhythmic swayings was the spell interrupted. The audience went mad with rapture, and the entire dance had to be repeated over and over again.
Ludwig, ensconced in the royal box, could not take his eyes off her. During an entr'acte he scribbled a verse:
Happy movements, clear and near,
Are in thy living grace.
Supple and tender, as a deer
Art thou, of Andalusian race!
"Wunderschön!" declared an admiring aide-de-camp to whom he showed it.
"Kolossal!" echoed a second, not to be outdone in recognising laureateship.
As, however, the cheers were mingled with a few hisses ("due to the report that the newcomer was an English Freemason, and wanted to destroy the Catholic religion"), the next evening the management took the precaution of filling the pit with a leather-lunged and horny-handed claque. This time the bill consisted of a comedy, Der Weiberseind von Benedix, followed by a cachucha and a fandango with Herr Opsermann for a dancing-partner.
Lola's success was assured; and Herr Frays, who had started by refusing to let her appear, was now full of grovelling apologies. He offered her a contract. But Lola, having other ideas as to how her time should be employed in Munich, would not accept it.
"Thank you for nothing," she said. "When I asked you for an engagement, you told me I was not good enough to dance in your theatre. Well, I have now proved to both Fräulein Frenzal and yourself that I am. That is all I care about, and I shall not dance again, either for you or for anybody else."
If she had known enough German, she would probably have added: "Put that in your pipe and smoke it!"
Munich in those days must have proved attractive to people with small incomes. Thus, Edward Wilberforce, who spent some years there, says that meat was fivepence a pound, beer twopence-halfpenny a quart, and servants' wages eight shillings a month. But there were drawbacks.
"The city," says an English guide-book of this period, "has the reputation of being a very dissolute capital." Yet it swarmed with churches. The police, too, exercised a strict watch upon the hotel registers; and, as a result of their activities, a "French visitor was separated from his feminine companion on grounds of public morality."
"None of your Parisian looseness for us!" said the City Fathers.
But Lola appears to have avoided any such rigid censorship. At any rate, a certain Auguste Papon (a mixture of pimp and souteneur), whom she had met in Paris, happened to be in Munich at the same time as herself. The intimacy was revived; and, as he did not possess the entrée to the Court, for some weeks they lived together at the Hotel Maulich. In the spring of 1847 a young Guardsman found himself in the town, on his way back to England from Kissengen. He records that, not knowing who she was, he sat next Lola Montez at dinner one evening, and gives an instance of her quick temper. "On the floor between us," he says, "was an ice-pail, with a bottle of champagne. A sudden quarrel occurred with her neighbour, a Bavarian lieutenant; and, applying her foot to the bucket, she sent it flying the length of the room."