She burst into his bedroom and saw two pistols--Alexandre's, no
doubt--lying upon the quilt. Gabriel, Dujarier's servant, who had followed
her, shook his head sadly, and said, "My master knows very well he will
not return." In an instant Lola was again outside the house, driving to
her good friend, Dumas's. The novelist told her that it was with De
Beauvallon, not with De Beauvoir, that their friend had gone to exchange
shots. "My God!" she cried, "then he is a dead man!"
She rushed back to the Rue Laffitte. She spent half an hour in agony of
mind, when the sound of a carriage stopping fell upon her ears. She flew
into the street, and opened the carriage door. A heavy body lurched
against her bosom. It was her dead lover.
XV
THE RECKONING
It was not in fair fight that Dujarier had fallen. Before even he had been
carried to his grave, with Balzac, Mery, Dumas, and De Girardin as his
pall-bearers, the suspicions of all his friends had been aroused. At Dr.
Verons, the morning of his death, Bertrand showed Dumas his finger-tip
still blackened by the barrel of De Beauvallon's pistol. Would a pistol
which had not been charged with ball leave such a stain? Experts present
said no. The suspicion that De Beauvallon had made doubly sure of killing
his adversary by trying his weapon beforehand ripened in the minds of many
into conviction. How, too, had the Creole spent the early part of the
morning? Why did he not come with his seconds to the Rue Pinon. What was
he doing while Dujarier was awaiting him in the Bois? The affair began to
wear a very sinister complexion. Representations were made to the police.
Enquiries were set on foot, and De Beauvallon and D'Ecquevillez promptly
retired across the Spanish frontier.
Lola had sustained a staggering blow. She was sincerely attached to
Dujarier, who had been more to her than any other man had been. The memory
of her husband was hateful. Liszt had flashed suddenly across her path,
to disappear a few weeks later. Besides, he had given her up of his own
accord. But this man had shared her life for months, had loved her to the
last, had cared for her both as a lover and a husband. In his will he left
her eighteen shares in the Palais Royal Theatre, representing twenty
thousand francs. She referred, years after, and no doubt sincerely, to his
death as a loss that could never be made up to her.
The luxury of grief is allowed in scant measure to those who minister to
the public's amusement. They must dry their tears quickly. Three weeks
after the fatal duel, Lola made her appearance at the Porte-St.-Martin
Theatre, in _La Biche au Bois_. The audience was no less critical than at
the Opera. She was hissed, and with her usual audacity, she exasperated
the public still more by expressing her contempt for them upon the stage.
So ended her career as a _danseuse_ in the French capital.
She lingered on in Paris, notwithstanding, frequenting the society of her
dead lover's friends in accordance with his last wishes. The legacy had
relieved her for the moment of the necessity of earning her living. She
longed to see retribution overtake the man who had robbed her of all that
life held dear. Justice seemed for a time to pursue the slayer with leaden
feet. In July the Royal Court of Paris practically exonerated the seconds,
and De Beauvallon thought it safe to surrender voluntarily. The
explanations he gave as to his movements on the 10th and 11th March did
not, as he had hoped they would, satisfy the authorities. The Court of
Cassation quashed the decision of the lower court, and sent the accused
for trial, on the charge of murder, before the Assize Court of Rouen.
The case is one of the most celebrated in the annals of French justice. It
all turned on the article in the code of honour that forbids a duellist to
make use of arms which he has already tried, and with which he is
proficient. All the witnesses--among whom were professed experts--agreed
that this rule was absolute. The case, which raised many other nice points
of law, was heard before the President of the Tribunal, Monsieur Letendre
de Tourville. The prosecution was conducted by the King's Procurator
(General Salveton), the Advocate-General, and two very able counsel,
Maitres Leon Duval and Romiguiere. But the defence had a tower of strength
in the great advocate Berryer, the defender of Ney, Lamennais,
Chateaubriand, and Louis Napoleon--the greatest pleader and, after
Mirabeau, the greatest orator his country has produced.
A trial whereat Alexandre Dumas and Lola Montez, to say nothing of the
lesser lights of the literary and theatrical world, appeared as witnesses,
excited immense interest. Dumas produced a sensation which must have
rejoiced his heart on entering the witness-box. He was asked his name and
profession. "Alexandre Dumas, Marquis Davy de la Pailleterie," he replied
with evident complacency; "and I should call myself a dramatist if I were
not in the country of Corneille."
"There are degrees in everything," replied the learned President.
Claudin, who heard these oft-quoted words, gives it as his opinion that
Dumas expressed himself thus from a genuine sense of modesty, and that the
judge did not succeed in being funny.
The great Alexandre was in very good form throughout the whole trial,
which lasted from the 26th to the 30th March 1846, inclusive. He
expounded the laws and principles of the duel, with copious commentaries.
He quoted an authoritative work on the subject, drawn up by a body of
noblemen and gentlemen--a work which the judge dryly observed he did not
intend to add to his library. At the conclusion of the first part of his
evidence (the gist of which we know) he solicited leave to return to
Paris, to assist at the representation of one of his dramas in five acts.
Dumas never lost an opportunity of advertising himself. He managed also to
drag his son into the box, though the latter had really nothing to say.
The frail, fair ladies of the supper-party also had to run the gauntlet of
examination and cross-examination. The virtuous ladies of Rouen, anxious
to hear the most scandalous details of the case, filled the space reserved
for the public, and having feasted their eyes on the _demi-mondaines_,
obstinately refused to let these find seats among them. Mademoiselle
Lievenne appeared in a charming toilette of blue velvet, with a red
Cashmere shawl, and a pearl-grey satin hood. Lola, as befitted the
melancholy occasion, wore the garb of mourning, and never, perhaps, showed
to more advantage than in her close-fitting black satin costume and
flowing shawl. She was the cynosure of all eyes. Though a year had passed
since the event now being discussed, her utterance was choked with sobs,
and the reading of Dujarier's last note caused her to shed floods of
tears. She declared that had she known it was De Beauvallon with whom her
lover intended to fight, she would have communicated with the police and
prevented the duel. "I would have gone to the rendezvous myself," she
cried with characteristic spirit. In her Memoirs, she adds that she would
have fought De Beauvallon herself, and her life-story testifies that this
was no empty gasconade.
That Dujarier's death had been premeditated by his antagonist was
abundantly proved at the trial. The pistols which the dead man's seconds
had been led to believe belonged to D'Ecquevillez were now admitted to be
the property of the accused's brother-in-law, Monsieur Granier de
Cassagnac. They had been in the possession of De Beauvallon since the eve
of the encounter. Circumstantial evidence went to show that he was
familiar with the weapons, and had practised with them on the fatal
morning. But the testimony of the witnesses, the facts themselves, the
skilful pleading of Duval, prevailed not against the eloquence of Berryer.
His magical powers of oratory brought the jury round to his point of view,
and De Beauvallon was acquitted of the charge of murder, though cast in
damages of twenty thousand francs towards the mother and the sister of his
victim.
The affair did not end there. The friends of Dujarier refused to be
diverted from the trail of vengeance. Fresh and conclusive evidence came
to light, and De Beauvallon and D'Ecquevillez were placed on their trial
for perjury during the first hearing. As regarded D'Ecquevillez, it was
established that he was no viscount, but a _bourgeois_ of doubtful
antecedents named Vincent, that his rank in the Spanish service was merely
that of a militia captain, and that his evidence, in general, was
worthless. It was proved that De Beauvallon had tried the pistols the very
morning of the duel in a garden at Chaillot, taking aim with them not
once, but a dozen times. Dujarier had been the victim of a deliberate
conspiracy. Both the accused were found guilty and condemned (9th October
1847) to eight years' imprisonment. Both escaped from prison during the
Revolution of the following year. The principal criminal returned to his
native isle, where his liberation was judicially sanctioned. His
subsequent appeal to obtain a reversal of his sentence was rejected by the
Court of Cassation in 1855.
Lola had left France long before the assassin of her lover was finally
brought to justice.
"In another six months," writes "the Englishman in Paris," "her name
was almost forgotten by all of us, except by Alexandre Dumas, who now
and then alluded to her. Though far from superstitious, Dumas, who had
been as much smitten with her as most of her admirers, avowed that he
was glad that she had disappeared. 'She has the evil eye,' he said,
'and is sure to bring bad luck to any one who closely links his
destiny with hers, for however short a time. You see what has occurred
to Dujarier? If ever she is heard of again, it will be in connection
with some terrible calamity that has befallen a lover of hers.' We all
laughed at him, except Dr. Veron, who could have given odds to Solomon
Eagle himself at prophesying. For once in a way, however, Alexandre
Dumas proved correct. When we did hear again of Lola Montes, it was in
connection with the disturbances at Munich, and the abdication of her
Royal lover, Louis I. of Bavaria."
XVI
IN QUEST OF A PRINCE
"The moment I get a nice, round, lump sum of money, I am going to try to
hook a prince." In these words Lola is said to have announced her ambition
to "the Englishman in Paris." That gossipy exile, whoever he was in this
particular instance, was no friend of hers, and took care, no doubt, to
render her expressions as brutally as possible. I do not doubt that he has
interpreted her meaning truthfully enough. It is clear that Lola was an
inordinately ambitious woman, eager to play a leading part in great
affairs. Her association with Dujarier and other active politicians, the
glimpses she had so often obtained of courts and thrones, stimulated this
longing for power. She felt within her the capacity to rule men, and the
ability to surmount great obstacles. A personal courage was hers, such as
would have earned its possessor, if a man, the cross of honour. She feared
not the bright face of danger, dreading only that circumstance might put
the things she coveted beyond her reach. Valour alone, she knew, is seldom
rewarded in a woman. It is considered by the women, and more particularly
the men, who do not possess it, unwomanly. Intellect, again, she had; but
its development had been checked, its faculties neglected, under the
Early Victorian system of women's education. Besides, the most superficial
observer could not have failed to see, that while learning in a man was
accounted a qualification for responsibilities and honours, in a woman it
was regarded as a not altogether enviable peculiarity--like an aquiline
nose, or the gift of sword-swallowing. In the five years Lola had passed
in the various capitals of Europe, it had become very plain to her that
what men supremely prize in women is physical beauty. The governing sex
attached no rewards (or, at any rate, the meagrest) to courage and wisdom.
They asked woman only to be beautiful. Some insisted that she should also
be virtuous, by which they meant she should bestow herself upon one of
them exclusively. In other words, they allowed women to influence them
only through the senses; and by the means they had themselves selected,
the ambitious woman had no choice but to attack them.
Over the grave of Dujarier Lola may well have exclaimed, "Farewell, love!"
Every one of her attachments had ended unhappily--the first ingloriously,
the last tragically. Under such blows, her nature hardened. Ambition
revived as sentiment waned. There was something worth living for still. At
Rouen she heard the murderer of her lover acquitted. Bitter and
disillusioned, she turned her steps towards Germany. Thanks to Dujarier,
she had now "the round, lump sum of money" necessary to the execution of
her project; and in Germany, with its thirty-six sovereigns, she could
hardly fail to encounter a prince. She travelled about from watering-place
to watering-place, from Wiesbaden to Homburg, from Homburg to
Baden-Baden, "punting in a small way, not settling down anywhere, and
almost deliberately avoiding both Frenchmen and Englishmen." At Baden it
was rumoured that the Prince of Orange (probably an old friend of her
Simla days) was among her admirers. There also she met that puissant
prince, Henry LXXII. of Reuss, who straightway fell in love with her. He
invited her to pay a visit to his exiguous dominions, and she went,
probably feeling that she was playing the part of sparrow-hawk. At the
Court of Reuss she suffered agonies of boredom. The etiquette was as
strict as in the palace of the Most Catholic King, and the deference
exacted by Henry LXXII. as profound as though he had been Czar of all the
Russias. True, in his territory, only half as large again as the county of
Middlesex, he wielded a power as absolute as that autocrat's. Of this
pettiness the beautiful stranger soon showed her impatience. Her infirmity
of temper betrayed itself. She infringed His Highness's prerogative by
chastising his subjects--still, this could be overlooked by an indulgent
prince. But when Henry one morning beheld Lola walking straight across his
flower-beds, he felt that it was time to vindicate the outraged majesty of
the throne. With his own august hands he wrote and signed an order,
expelling Mademoiselle Montez from the principality. To this decree effect
was only given when His Highness had satisfied to the last pfennig a
tremendously long bill for expenses, presented to him by the audacious
offender.
As it is hardly possible to take a long walk without overstepping the
limits of the principality, not many hours elapsed before Lola was beyond
the reach of Henry's wrath. She had the choice of various retreats. The
neighbouring duchy of Saxe-Altenburg she, no doubt, contemptuously
dismissed. To the north lay Prussia; but she could expect no welcome
there. Frederick William, after her memorable adventure at the review, had
given her to understand that his police could be better employed than in
teaching her manners. She avoided Weimar, where her old lover, Liszt, had
established himself in company with the Princess Zu Sayn-Wittgenstein. She
may have lingered awhile in these pretty, petty Thuringian states, with
their charming capitals set in the forest glades; and perhaps have made a
pilgrimage to the Venusberg, near Eisenach, where her prototype ensnared
Tannhaeuser. The spirit of that old _minnesaenger_ was not altogether dead.
Something of it glowed in the heart of the grey-haired man who reigned
over Bavaria. Deliberately or aimlessly, Lola Montez, the Venus of her
generation, journeyed south towards Munich.
XVII
THE KING OF BAVARIA
At that time Louis I., who wore the Bavarian crown, was a man sixty-one
years old. He, "the most German of the Germans," as he had been styled,
was by an odd freak of fortune born in France. His father, Max Joseph,
though brother of the Duke of Pfalz-Zweibruecken, commanded a regiment in
the French service, and it was at Strasbourg that the child was born in
1786. His father's grenadiers shaved off their moustaches to stuff his
pillow with. The name bestowed on him in baptism was that of his
godfather, the ill-fated King of France. But the Revolution soon drove him
with his family across the Rhine, to Mannheim and to Rohrbach. Death
quickly cleared the boy a path to the throne. His father presently
succeeded his brother as Duke, and a few years later upon the extinction
of the elder line of the Wittelsbachs, became Elector of Bavaria.
Even in the stormy first decade of the nineteenth century princes had to
be educated, and in the year 1803 we find Louis at Goettingen, sitting at
the feet of Johannes Mueller, who infused him with a lively sense of
nationality and a reverence for all things German. This was to stand the
Prince in good stead in the dark days that followed. Those were years of
profound humiliation for Germany, of poignant suffering for her people.
Even in the 'forties few Germans took pride in the name, some of them
settled in London and Paris, deeming it almost a reproach. In his
country's blackest night the Bavarian prince loudly proclaimed his faith
in a glorious dawn. He exulted in the name of German. He was "teutsch" (as
he always wrote the word) to the very core.
He was German not least in his passion for the South. Italy was his first,
last, and best-beloved mistress. In her bosom he was inspired with that
love for the arts which was stronger even than his patriotism. Returning
to Germany, he saw with disgust his father embrace the alliance of
Napoleon and turn his arms against Austria--German fighting German. At
Strasbourg, on hearing the news of the capitulation at Ulm, he dared to
say to the Empress Josephine: "The greatest victory for me will be when
this, my native city, is united to Germany." He accompanied Max Joseph to
the Emperor's headquarters at Linz in 1805, when Bavaria was erected by
the conqueror's decree into a kingdom. The new Crown Prince made no secret
of his antipathies. Anxious to win him over, Napoleon carried him off to
Paris, and only succeeded in disgusting him by his irreverence during
divine worship. Louis was a devout and sincere Catholic. From the
Tuileries he intrigued for the overthrow of his host and gaoler with Czar
Alexander. His father got wind of these negotiations and recalled him to
Munich. Thence he was sent to join the Bavarian army in Prussia. With
unspeakable bitterness he heard that the victory of Jena was celebrated at
his father's capital with a _Te Deum_ and public rejoicings. In January
1807, in the train of the conquering army, he reached Berlin. There his
first act was to unveil a bust of Frederick the Great!
[Illustration: LOUIS OF BAVARIA. WHEN ELECTORAL PRINCE.]
At the beginning of the campaign against Russia, at Napoleon's request,
which was practically a command, Louis took the head of the Bavarian army.
Years after, he refused to sanction the publication of a work on his
military achievements at this time. With the war-weary veteran of De
Vigny's tale, he might have said: "J'ai appris a detester la guerre, en la
faisant avec energie." For he was no carpet knight. Though compelled to
draw the sword against men of his own race and their allies, he wielded it
well. Under a hot fire he led his troops across the Narew, and at Pultusk
won the Grand Cross of the Order of Max Joseph. Such services could not
blind Napoleon to his lieutenant's real sympathies. In his indignation
against what he considered the ingratitude and treachery of his ally's
son, he is reported to have exclaimed: "Quoi m'empeche de fusilier ce
prince?" He dared not go to such desperate lengths. Instead, he superseded
Louis in the command of the Bavarian army, at the beginning of the
campaign of 1809, by one of his own marshals, Lefebvre, Duke of Danzig. To
the Prince was assigned simply the command of a division. He fought well
at Abensberg, where the _mot d'ordre_ was _Bravoure et Baviere_. "It is to
Germans that the Emperor owes this victory over Germans," he boasted
bitterly.
In the revolt of the Tyrolese against the Bavarian yoke imposed on them by
the French, his heart went out to the gallant insurgents. He pensioned a
son of the patriot Speckbacher, and condoled with Hofer's wife on the
execution of her husband. Napoleon's indignation knew no bounds. "This
prince," he declared, "shall never reign in Bavaria!" He destined the
crown for Eugene Beauharnais, or one of his children.
But it was Louis's policy that triumphed in 1813. With delight he beheld
his father desert the sinking ship of France, and from Salzburg (then
belonging to Bavaria) he issued a proclamation, urging all the German
people to rise against the common oppressor. Wrede, with a Bavarian army,
threw himself across the path of the retreating French at Hanau, to find
that the wounded eagle's talons could still snatch a bloody victory. In
the campaigns of 1814 and 1815, Louis took no active part. His father
dreaded that he might fall into the hands of Napoleon, who regarded him
with intense hatred. The Prince had to be content with the part of
Tyrtaeus, and in odes, not deficient in merit, stirred the patriotic
feelings of his countrymen.
After Waterloo he sheathed the sword that he had wielded reluctantly, but
not ingloriously. "I was never a general," he said, "but a soldier,
yes--with all my heart." He was now free to devote himself to matters
which more strongly, perhaps, appealed to him. At Vienna and London he
watched over the interests of the arts. He pleaded (and not
unsuccessfully) for the restitution of the artistic treasures Napoleon had
carried off, and wrote on the subject of the Elgin marbles with judgment
and critical acumen. He sought the acquaintance of the brilliant and the
learned, presiding over a _coterie_ of painters, sculptors, and
_literati_. The winters of 1817-8 and 1820-1 he spent in the Eternal City,
residing at the Bavarian Embassy or at the Villa Malta on the Pincio. He
knew Canova and Thorwaldsen, and laid the foundations of his firm and
life-long intimacy with the sculptor, Wagner. On the Neue Pinakothek at
Munich is a picture by Catel, representing one of those joyous and
scholarly _reunions_ in which Louis delighted. He is shown seated at a
table in a humble _osteria_ on the Ripa Grande, in the company of
Thorwaldsen, Wagner, the artists Veit, Von Schnorr, and Catel himself, the
architect Von Klenze, Professor Ringseis, Count Seinsheim, and Colonel von
Gumppenberg. It was in such company, and beneath the blue sky of Italy,
that "the most German of the Germans" was happiest. His aesthetic faculties
were altogether exotic. His style of literary composition is compared by
an English writer to a dislocation of all the limbs of a human body.
"Nothing can be more un-German, more opposed to the genius of the
language, than this extraordinary style, the like of which is not to
be found in the whole range of German literature.[10] It is an
aberration of which we have an English example in 'Carlylese.'"