"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."