"As long," said counsel, "as the amiable Mlle Montez was treated by M. Roux like a wild animal exhibited at a country fair, she merely shrugged her shoulders in disgust. When, however, she saw how this abominable pamphlet lifted the curtain from her private life, it was another thing altogether. She expressed womanly indignation, and made a spirited response."
"What was that?" enquired the judge, with interest.
"She said: 'It is lucky for you, sir, that my husband is not here to protect me. If he were, he would certainly pull your nose!'"
As was inevitable, this expression of opinion shattered the entente, and the manager returned to Paris by himself. Hearing nothing from him, Lola Montez thought that she was at liberty to make her own plans, and had accordingly arranged the American tour without his help.
On November 6, 1851, continued counsel, Lola Montez arrived in Paris, telling M. Roux that she would leave for America on November 20, but that she would fulfil any engagement he secured during the interval. Just before she was ready to start he said he had got her one, but he would not tell her where it was or produce any written contract.
Accepting this version as the correct one, the Court pronounced judgment in favour of Lola Montez.
III
M. Roux having thus been dismissed with a flea in his ear, Lola, on the advice of Peter Goodrich, the American consul in Paris, next engaged Richard Storrs Willis (a brother of N. P. Willis, the American poet) to look after her business affairs, and left Europe for America. As the good ship Humbolt, by which she was sailing, warped into harbour at New York, a salute of twenty-one guns thundered from the Battery. Lola, mightily pleased, took this expenditure of ammunition as a tribute to herself. When, however, she discovered that it was really to herald the coming of Louis Kossuth, who also happened to be on board, she registered annoyance and retired to her cabin, to nurse her wrath. A Magyar patriot to be more honoured than an English ex-favourite of a King! What next?
"A gentleman travelling with her informed our representative," said the New York Herald, "that Madame had declared Kossuth to be a great humbug. The Countess was a prodigious favourite among the masculine passengers during the voyage, and continually kept them in roars of laughter."
But, if disappointed in one respect, Lola derived a measure of compensation from the fact that the bevy of reporters who met the vessel found her much more interesting than the stranger from Hungary.