d as the result
of a chance visit to Spurgeon's Tabernacle when she was last in
England. Although Spurgeon himself never put forward any such claim, a
diary that Lola kept at the time has a significant entry:

LONDON,

_September 10, 1859._

How many, many years of my life have been sacrificed to
Satan and my own love of sin! What have I not been guilty of
in thought or deed during these years of wretchedness! Oh! I
dare not think of the past. What have I not been! I only
lived for my own passions; and what is there of good even in
the best natural human being! What would I not give to have
my terrible and fearful experience given as an awful warning
to such natures as my own!

A week later, things not having improved during the interval, she took
stock of her position in greater detail:

I am afraid sometimes that I think too well of myself. But
let me only look back to the past. Oh! how I am humbled....
How manifold are my sins, and how long in years have I lived
a life of evil passions without a check!

To-morrow (the Lord's Day) is the day of peace and
happiness. Once it seemed to me anything but a happy day.
But now all is wonderfully changed in my heart.... This week
I have principally sinned through hastiness of temper and
uncharitableness of feeling towards my neighbour. Oh! that I
could have only love for others and hatred of myself!

Another passage ran:

To-morrow is Sunday, and I shall go into the poor little
humble chapel, and there will I mingle my prayers with the
fervent pastor, and with the good and true. There is no pomp
or ceremony among these. All is simple. No fine dresses, no
worldly display, but the honest Methodist breathes forth a
sincere prayer, and I feel much unity of souls.

The "conversion" of Lola Montez was no flash in the pan, or the result
of a sudden impulse. It was a real one, deep and sincere and lasting.
Her former triumphs on the stage and in the boudoir had become as dust
and ashes. Compared with her new-found joy in religion, all else was
vanity and emptiness.

"I can forget my French and German, and everything else I have
valued," she is declared to have said to a pressman, who, scenting a
"news story," followed hot-foot on her track, "but I cannot forget my
Christ."

She had been "Montez the Magnificent." Now she was "Montez the
Magd