to Spain for safety from the law. Her husband was drowned, and she
made still another marriage. She visited Australia, and at Melbourne
she had a fight with a strapping woman, who clawed her face until Lola
fell fainting to the ground. It is a squalid record of horse-whippings,
face-scratchings--in short, a rowdy life.

Her end was like that of Becky Sharp. In America she delivered lectures
which were written for her by a clergyman and which dealt with the art
of beauty. She had a temporary success; but soon she became quite poor,
and took to piety, professing to be a sort of piteous, penitent
Magdalen. In this role she made effective use of her beautiful dark
hair, her pallor, and her wonderful eyes. But the violence of her
disposition had wrecked her physically; and she died of paralysis in
Astoria, on Long Island, in 1861. Upon her grave in Greenwood Cemetery,
Brooklyn, there is a tablet to her memory, bearing the inscription:
"Mrs. Eliza Gilbert, born 1818, died 1861."

What can one say of a woman such as this? She had no morals, and her
manners were outrageous. The love she felt was the love of a she-wolf.
Fourteen biographies of her have been written, besides her own
autobiography, which was called The Story of a Penitent, and which
tells less about her than any of the other books. Her beauty was
undeniable. Her courage was the blended courage of the Celt, the
Spaniard, and the Moor. Yet all that one can say of her was said by the
elder Dumas when he declared that she was born to be the evil genius of
every one who cared for her. Her greatest fame comes from the fact that
in less than three years she overturned a kingdom and lost a king his
throne.

LEON GAMBETTA AND LEONIE LEON

The present French Republic has endured for over forty years. Within
that time it has produced just one man of extraordinary power and
parts. This was Leon Gambetta. Other men as remarkable as he were
conspicuous in French political life during the first few years of the
republic; but they belonged to an earlier generation, while Gambetta
leaped into prominence only when the empire fell, crashing down in ruin
and disaster.

It is still too early to form an accurate estimate of him as a
statesman. His friends praise him extravagantly. His enemies still
revile him bitterly. The period of his political career lasted for
little more than a decade, yet in that time it may be said that he
lived almost a life of fifty years. Only a