I only saw her that night. The next day we left Munich, and I never saw her again. From a gentleman I met afterward in Paris, and who had known Montes from the time of her first appearance in public, I learned that extreme poverty had driven her to the stage. She had not been educated for it as a profession; and the touching account he gave me of her trials, united with my own knowledge of Lolah Lalande’s history, convinced me that Lolah Lalande and Lolah Montes were, as I had imagined, one and the same person. Soon after their arrival in Paris, Madame Lalande discovered that her move had been an injudicious one. Success did not attend her as she expected; the _château d’Espagne_ she had created was never realized; and she found herself, although in her “home,” the residence of her childhood, among strangers; old associates were dead, or had formed new connections. Day by day passed, and the little capital she had collected in America, and which was to establish the grand school in Paris for _les jeunes demoiselles_ of the nobility, gradually melted away; and she at last resolved to bid an eternal farewell to Paris, and return, though with mortified feelings, to the school in America she had with such blind willfulness given up. But just as she had come to this conclusion, and Lolah was gladly making preparations for their return, sickness, caused by extreme chagrin and disappointment, attacked _chère tante_. This sickness was lingering, and at last, bitter, actual poverty stared them in the face. “What am I to do?” exclaimed poor Lolah, one day, as she turned from the apothecary’s door, to whom she had just paid her last coin for medicine for _chère tante_. Gay equipages dashed past her; and the busy, bustling crowd moved by, unheeding the misery of that pale, friendless girl. “God help me,” she murmured, in a thick, hoarse voice. Sorrow and want had dried up her tears—the real poor seldom weep. She turned to seek her wretched home, which, miserable as it was, she knew not how long it might remain to them. Faint and exhausted with hunger and anxiety, she could scarcely drag her little feet along the _pavé_. Regardless of her movements, she stumbled over a stone; a kind person passing, caught her as she fell, and upon lifting her eyes to thank him, she recognized Monsieur Neillet. “Ah, Mademoiselle Lolah! can this be you?” he exclaimed. “I have been seeking in vain for Madame Lalande’s residence ever since I reached Paris;” and then followed a host of questions and explanations.