m not doing so without foundation. It is almost certain
by now that the Jesuits, seeing in her a tool for the further
subjugation of the superannuated royal troubadour, countenanced, if they
did not assist her in her schemes; they, the Jesuits, did many things of
which a Catholic, like myself, however firm in his allegiance to Rome,
could not but disapprove. At any rate, three or four days after the
king's first meeting with her, Lola Montes was presented at court, and
introduced to the royal family and corps diplomatique by the sovereign
himself, as 'his best friend.' Events proceeded apace. In August, '47,
the king granted her patents of 'special naturalization,' created her
Baroness von Rosenthal, and, almost immediately afterwards, Countess von
Landsfeld. She received an annuity of twenty thousand florins, and had a
magnificent mansion built for her. At the instance of the king, the
queen was compelled to confer the order of St. Therese upon her. I, and
many others, had strenuously opposed all this, though not unaware that,
up till then, the Jesuits were on her side, rather than on ours. We paid
the penalty of our opposition with our dismissal from office, and then
Lola Montes confronted the Jesuits by herself. She was absolutely mad to
invade Wurtemberg, not for any political reason; she could no more have
accounted for any such than the merest hind, but simply because, a few
months before her appearance at Munich, she had been, in her opinion,
slighted by the old king. The fact was, old William, sincerely attached
to Amalia Stubenrauch, the actress, had not fallen a victim to Lola
Montes' charms, and had taken little or no notice of her. The
contemplated invasion of Wurtemberg was an act of private revenge. But
mad as she was, there was some one more mad still--King Louis I. of
Bavaria.

"The most ill-advised thing she did, perhaps, was to change her
supporters. Like the ignorant, overbearing woman she was, she would not
consent to share her power over the king with the Jesuits; she tried to
form an opposition against them among the students at the University,
and she succeeded to a certain extent. These adherents constituted the
nucleus of a corps which soon became known under the title of
'Allemanen.' But the more noble-minded and patriotic youths at the
Munich University virtually ostracized the latter, and several minor
disturbances had already broken out in consequence of this, when, in the
beginning of Febru