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."
IV
Lola certainly made the running. Five days after she first met him, Ludwig summoned all the officials of the Court, and astonished (and shocked) them by introducing her with the remark: "Gentlemen, I have the honour to present to you my best friend. See to it that you accord her every possible respect." He also compelled his long suffering spouse to admit her to the Order of the Chanoines of St. Thérèse, a distinction for which—considering her somewhat lurid "past"—this new recipient was scarcely eligible.
When he heard that instructions had been issued for paying special compliments to her, Mr. Punch registered severe disapproval.
"It is a good joke," he remarked, "to call upon others to uphold the dignity of one who is always at some freak or other to lower herself."
When she first sailed in dramatic fashion into the orbit of Bavaria's sovereign, Lola Montez was just twenty-seven. In the full noontide of her beauty and allurement, she was well equipped with what the modern jargon calls sex-appeal. Big-bosomed and with generously swelling curves, "her form," says Eduard Fuchs, "was provocation incarnate." Fuchs, who was an expert on the subject of feminine attractions, knew what he was talking about. "Shameless and impudent," adds Heinrich von Treitschke, "and as insatiable in her voluptuous desires as Sempronia, she could converse with charm among friends; manage mettlesome horses; sing in thrilling fashion; and recite amorous poems in Spanish. The King, an admirer of feminine beauty, yielded to her magic. It was as if she had given him a love philtre. For her he forgot himself; he forgot the world; and he even forgot his royal dignity."
The fact that Lola always wore a Byronic collar helped the theory, held by many, that she was a daughter of the poet. But her real reason for adopting the style was that she had a lovely neck, and this set it off to the best advantage. She studied the art of dress and gave it an immense amount of care. Where this matter was concerned, no trouble or care was too much. Her favourite material was velvet, which she considered—and quite justifiably—to exercise an erotic effect on men of a certain age. She was insistent, too, that the contours of her figure ("her quivering thighs and all the demesnes adjacent thereto") should be clearly revealed, and in a distinctly provocative fashion. This, of course, was not far removed from exhibitionism. As a result, bourgeois opinion was outraged. The wives of the petty officials shopping in the Marienplatz shuddered, and clutched their ample skirts when they saw her; anxious mothers instructed dumpy Fräuleins "not to look like the foreign woman." There is no authoritative record that any of them did so.