stalls
and pit. 'We want to see if her foot is as light as her
hand!' Never did they witness a more astounding _entree_.
After her first leap, she stopped short on the tips of her
toes, and, by a movement of prodigious rapidity, detached
one of her garters from a lissome limb adjacent to her
quivering thigh (innocent of _lingerie_) and flung it to the
occupants of the front row of the orchestra....
Notwithstanding the effect produced by this piquant
eccentricity, Mile Lola has not met with the reception she
anticipated; and it has been deemed proper by the management
to dispense with her reappearance."

But to give Lola her _conge_ by word of mouth was a task which M.
Pillet did not care to undertake. "So much was the haughty Amazon's
riding-whip dreaded that a letter of dismissal was prudently
delivered. As a result, bloodshed was avoided; and Mlle Lola has
solaced herself with the reflection that she has been the victim of
the Machiavellian cabal of Russia, still angry at her routing of
Muscovite gendarmes in Warsaw."

With reference to the Warsaw episode, the slipshod de Mirecourt says
that she was dancing there in 1839. At that date, however, she was no
nearer Warsaw than Calcutta. None the less, she did go there, but it
was not until she had left Paris after her failure at the Academie
Royale. According to herself, the Czar Nicholas, who remembered her in
Berlin, invited her to visit St. Petersburg, and, having a month to
spare, she accepted a preliminary engagement in the Polish capital.

This began well enough, for, if her terpsichorean abilities still left
something to be desired, the Warsaw critics, ever susceptible to
feminine charms, went into positive raptures about her personal
attractions. One of them, indeed, became almost lyrical on the
subject:

"Her soft silken hair," was this authority's opinion, "falls in
luxuriant wealth down her back, its glistening hue rivalling that of
the raven's wing; on a slender and delicate neck--the whiteness of
which eclipses swansdown--is poised a lovely face.... Where the
proportions are concerned, Lola's little feet are somewhere between
those of a Chinese maiden and those of the daintiest Parisienne
imaginable. As for her bewitching calves, they suggest the steps of a
Jacob's ladder transporting one up to heaven; and her ravishing
figure resembles the Venus of Cnidus, that immortal masterpiece
sculptured by