He said that I could not have read it in
the time. I begged him to examine me on it, which he did, and expressed
his amazement, for he declared that he had never met with anything like
it in all his life. This from him was praise indeed. Long after, in
America, George Boker in closer fashion tested me on this without my
knowing it, and published the result in an article.

I became acquainted with a learned writer on art named Foerster, who had
married a daughter of Jean Paul Richter, and dined once or twice at his
house. I also saw him twenty years later in Munich. George Ward came in
from Berlin to stay some weeks in Munich. I saw Taglioni several times
at the opera, but did not make her acquaintance till 1870. The great,
tremendous celebrity at that time in Munich was also an opera-dancer,
though not on the stage. This was Lola Montez, the King's last
favourite. He had had all his mistresses painted, one by one, and the
gallery was open to the public. Lola's was the last, and there was a
blank space still left _for a few more_. I thought that about twenty-
five would complete the collection.

Lola Montez had a small palace, and was raised to be the Countess of
Landsfeldt, but this was not enough. She wished to run the whole kingdom
and government, and kick out the Jesuits, and kick up the devil,
generally speaking. But the Jesuits and the mob were too much for her. I
knew her very well in later years in America, when she deeply regretted
that I had not called on her in Munich. I must have had a great moral
influence on her, for, so far as I am aware, I am the only friend whom
she ever had at whom she never threw a plate or book, or attacked with a
dagger, poker, broom, chair, or other deadly weapon. We were both born
at the same time in the same year, and I find by the rules of sorcery
that she is the first person who will meet me when I go to heaven. I
always had a great and strange respect for her singular talents; there
were very few indeed, if any there were, who really knew the depths of
that wild Irish soul. Men generally were madly fascinated with her, then
as suddenly disenchanted, and then detracted from her in every way.

There were many adventuresses in later years who passed themselves about
the world for Lola Montez. I have met with two friends, whom I am sure
were honest gentlemen, who told me they had known her intimately. Both
described her as a large, powerful, or robust woman. L