I have no means of verifying this account. Riots were of frequent occurrence in Warsaw during the 'forties, but, thanks to a rigid censorship of the Press, the particulars concerning them have failed to reach us. That the citizens would at once side with any one who for any reason whatsoever was "agin the Government" is not to be doubted, and Lola was quite clever enough to make a slight to her appear as an insult to the Warsaw public. In defending herself with the pistol, she only gave proof of the manlike courage and resolution conspicuous throughout her whole career. As to the cause of the row, one of Lola's recent biographers remarks that if Prince Paskievich had made the offer alleged, it is quite certain that she would have closed with it. It is far from being certain. The Russian Viceroy was definitely repugnant to her, and her subsequent experiences show that she never bestowed herself upon a man whom she could not, or did not, love. She was new, too, to her _role_ of adventuress. Altogether, there is no good reason for doubting that Lola's relation of her experiences in the Polish capital is substantially true. On the other hand, vanity certainly betrayed her into several deviations from the truth in her reminiscences of St. Petersburg. She went thither, she informs us, upon her expulsion from Poland--an odd refuge! Of her journey in a _caleche_ across the wastes of Lithuania and through the dark forests of Muscovy; of St. Petersburg, still half an Oriental city, where all men below the rank of nobles wore the long beard and caftan of the Asiatic--our _raconteuse_ has nothing to say. She introduces us at once to the Tsar and the innermost arcanum of his Court. "Nicholas was as amiable and accomplished in private life as he was great, stern, and inflexible as a monarch. He was the strongest pattern of a monarch of this age, and I see no promise of his equal, either in the incumbents or the heirs-apparent of the other thrones of Europe."