A choice specimen among the collection was one entitled Lola Montez, oder Des Mench gehört dem Könige ("Lola Montez, or the Wench who belongs to the King"). There was also a scurrilous, and distinctly blasphemous, broadsheet, purporting to be Lola's private version of the Lord's Prayer: "Our Father, in whom throughout my life, I have never yet had much belief, all's well with me. Hallowed be thy name--so far as I am concerned. Thy kingdom come, that is, my bags of gold, my polished diamonds, and my unpolished Alemannia. Thy will be done, if thou wilt destroy my enemies. Give me this day champagne and truffles and pheasant, and all else that is delectable, for I have a very good appetite.... Lead me not into temptation to return to this country, for, even if I were bullet-proof, I might be arrested, clapped into a cage, and six francs charged for a peep at me. Amen!"
IV
Those were the days when gentlemen (at any rate, Bavarians) did not necessarily prefer blondes. Lola's raven locks were much more to their taste. If she were not a success in the ballet, she was certainly one in the boudoir. Of a hospitable and gregarious disposition, she kept what amounted to open house in her Barerstrasse villa. Every morning she held an informal levée there, at which any stranger who sent in his card was welcome to call and pay his respects; and in the evenings, when she was not dancing attendance on Ludwig at the Palace, the Barerstrasse reception would be followed by a soirée. These gatherings attracted--in addition to a throng of artists and authors and musicians--professors and scholars from all over Europe; and, as Gertrude Aretz remarks, in her admirable study, The Elegant Woman (with considerable reference to this one): "the best intellects of her century helped to draw her victorious chariot." The uncultured mob, however, dubbed her a "Fair Impire" and a "Light o' Love," and flung even stronger and still more uncomplimentary epithets. Their subject, however, received them with a laugh. The shopkeepers, with an eye to business, embellished their wares with her portrait; and the University students, headed by Fritz Peissner, serenaded her in front of her windows.
Lolita schön, wie Salamoni's Weiber. Welch 'suszer Reis flog über dich dahin!
they sang in rousing chorus.
Among the students engaged in amassing light and learning at the University of Munich, there were a number of foreigners. One of them was a young American, Charles Godfrey Leland ("Hans Breitmann"), who had gone there, he says, to "study æsthetics." But this did not take up all his time, for, during the intervals of attending classes, he managed to see something of Lola Montez. "I must," he says, "have had a great moral influence on her, for, so far as I am aware, I am the only friend she ever had at whom she never threw a plate or a book, or attacked with a dagger, poker, broom, or other deadly weapon.... I always had a strange and great respect for her singular talents. There were few, indeed, if any there, were, who really knew the depths of that wild Irish soul."