This letter was copied by _La Presse_, which De Girardin still edited, and was presently noticed by the person most interested. His reply was duly published:-- "BAYONNE, _9th September, 1856_. "SIR,--I read in your issue of the 7th. inst. a letter from Lola Montez, wherein there is talk of a suicide of which I have been the victim, and a marriage in which I have been principal actor. I am a complete stranger to such catastrophes. I have never had the least intention of throwing myself from the Pic du Midi, or from any other peak, and I do not recollect having had the advantage of marrying--even for eight days--the celebrated Countess of Landsfeld,--Yours, etc., MAUCLERC."[29] The simplest and most probable explanation of this affair is to set it down as a hoax. Bayonne and St. Jean de Luz are neighbouring towns, and it is possible that the actor had (perhaps unwittingly) incurred the anger of the Countess, who devised this rather elaborate means of revenge. Soon after, Lola returned to the United States, a country for which she had conceived a strong liking. She considered it her home, says the Rev. F. L. Hawks, and had a sincere admiration for its institutions. Lola was by nature a republican, and intimacy with sovereigns had not much awakened her distaste for them. "To Freedom ever true, true, true, All his long life was Harlequin!" On 2nd February 1857 we find her fulfilling a week's engagement at the Green Street Theatre at Albany, acting in _The Eton Boy_, _The Follies of a Night_, and _Lola in Bavaria_. She was not unknown at the state capital, having appeared there, with a _troupe_ of twelve dancers, at the Museum, in May 1852. On the present occasion she gave another proof of her dare-devil courage, by crossing the Hudson River in an open skiff among the floating ice. "She got over in safety, but part of her wardrobe was carried down stream. By going to Troy she could have avoided all danger, but her love of notoriety led her to offer a hundred dollars to be carried across here."[30]