ond time. Apart from this consideration,
she was probably well aware that her divorce from the philandering
Thomas James had never been completed.

As Dujarier's acknowledged mistress, Lola was accepted without demur
as one of themselves by the literary and artistic "set" thronging the
cafes and salons they frequented. Gautier and Sue, with Claudin and
Mery and Dumas, were those habitues of whom she saw most; and
Ferdinand Bac (but nobody else) says that she was on intimate terms
with the austere M. Guizot.

Gustave Claudin declared that he met Lola Montez in Paris in the
spring of 1841. That she made an impression on him is evident from a
passage in his _Souvenirs_:

Lola Montez was a charmer. There was something--I do not
quite know what--about her appearance that was provocative
and voluptuous, and which attracted one. She had a white
skin, hair suggestive of the tendrils of honeysuckle, and a
mouth that could be compared with a pomegranate. Added to
this was a ravishing figure, charming feet, and perfect
grace. Unfortunately, as a dancer, she had very little
talent.

Towards the year 1845 the author of these notes saw much of
her. She wanted him to write her memoirs, and gave him some
material for them.... She was born in Seville in 1823, with
a French officer for a godfather and (as is the custom in
Spain) the city of Seville for a godmother. The adventures
of her life were written out by her in an exercise-book. She
told me that, at a ball in Calcutta, she had once refused to
waltz with a wealthy gentleman who was so encrusted with
diamonds that he resembled a snuff-box. When he asked her
the reason for refusing to dance, she replied: "Sir, I
cannot dance with you because you have hurt my foot." The
would-be waltzer was a chiropodist!

Writing, as he did, nearly fifty years after the episode to which he
thus refers, Claudin's memory was a little shaky. Thus Lola Montez was
born in Limerick in 1818, not, as he says, at Seville in 1823; nor
could Claudin have met her in Paris in the spring of 1841, as she had
not then left India.

Dujarier, according to Lola, was much impressed by her political
acumen, and employed her on "secret service" for the Government,
entrusting her as a preliminary with a "mission to St. Petersburg."
The story is an obvious concoction, if merely because Dujarier, being
little beyond