beer. Becoming
quarrelsome, their leader, Count Hirschberg, drew his sword and was
threatened with arrest by a schutzmannschaft. Thereupon, his comrades
sent word to Lola. She answered the call, and rushed to the house. It
was a characteristic, but mad, gesture, for she was promptly
recognised and pursued by a furious mob. Nobody would give her
sanctuary; and the Swiss Guards on duty there shut the doors of the
Austrian Legation in her face. Thereupon, she fled to the Theatiner
Church, where she took refuge. But she did not stop there long; and,
for her own safety, a military escort arrived to conduct her to the
main guard-room. As soon as the coast was comparatively clear, she was
smuggled out by a back entrance and making her way on foot to the
Barerstrasse, hid in the garden.

In the meantime fresh attempts were being made to storm her house.
Suddenly, a figure, dishevelled and bare-headed, appeared on the
threshold and confronted the rioters.

"You are behaving like a pack of vulgar blackguards," he exclaimed,
"and not like true Bavarians at all. I give you my word, the house is
empty. Leave it in peace."

A gallant gesture, and a last act of homage to the building that had
sheltered the woman he loved. The mob, recognising the speaker,
uncovered instinctively. _Heil, unserm Koenig, Heil!_ they shouted. A
chorus swelled; the troops presented arms.

"It is an orgy of ingratitude," said Ludwig, as he watched the rabble
dancing with glee before the house. "The Jesuits are responsible. If
my Lola had been called Loyala, she could still have stopped here."

To Dr. Stahl, Bishop of Wurzburg, who had criticised his conduct, he
addressed himself more strongly. "Should a single hair of one I hold
dear to me be injured," he informed that prelate, "I shall exhibit no
mercy."

Palmerston, who stood no nonsense from anybody, wrote a very snappy
letter to Sir John Milbanke, British Minister at Munich:

"Pray tell Prince Wallerstein that, if he wishes the British
and Bavarian Governments to be on good terms, he will
abstain from any attempt to interfere with our diplomatic
arrangements, as such attempts on his part are as offensive
as they will be fruitless."

II

As Ludwig had said, the Barerstrasse nest was empty, for its occupant
had managed to slip out of it and reach Lindeau. From there, on
February 23, she wrote a long letter to a friend in England, giving a
somewhat highly coloured (a