ed 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.

"Madame Lola Montez," remarked one of them, who had gone off with a
bulging note-book, crammed with enough "copy" to fill a column, "says
that a number of shocking falsehoods about her have been published in
our journals. Yet she insists she is not the woman she is credited (or
discredited) with being. If she were, her admirers, she thinks, would
be still more plentiful than they are. She expresses herself as
fearful that she will not have proper consideration in New York; but
she trusts that the great American public will suspend judgment u