The rumour that she was an agent of "the English Freemasons," if by that term we may understand the English Liberals, is not to be dismissed as altogether preposterous. Our Government at that time was more or less actively hostile to the ultra-legitimist and clerical tendencies paramount in Central Europe: we backed the Swiss Confederation against the Sonderbund; we sympathised with the Italians in their struggles for freedom; English volunteers fought for the Liberal Christinos against the Ultramontane Carlists. Lola's well-known sympathies, her knowledge of continental courts, above all, her personality, would have recommended her as a most valuable agent to our Foreign Office. We shall see presently that she became the honoured guest of an English ambassador, and how legal proceedings afterwards instituted against her in this country were mysteriously suffered to collapse, as if in obedience to orders from above. Lola never describes herself, it is true, as a secret agent of our Government, but she would naturally have preferred to appear as the independent, irresponsible dictatrix of a nation's policy. Whatever the cause may have been, antagonism manifested itself between Lola Montez and the King's advisers, official and clerical, within a very few days of her arrival at his court. Louis is said to have introduced her to his ministers as his best friend. The Jesuits immediately circulated the report that she was his mistress, and endeavoured to inflame the Bavarian people against her. In obedience to their principle of the Church first and political consistency a long way after, they instigated a general attack upon King and favourite through the clerical press of Germany. It was truly remarked in one of the independent organs of opinion that the most extreme radical could not have shown less regard for the person of the sovereign than these champions of legitimacy. Caricature, that pitiable prostitution of a divine art, was assiduously employed. Louis was represented as a crowned satyr, a pug-dog, an ass with a crown tied to his tail; Lola was treated with even less regard for decency. The ape that lurks in every man gibbered in every clerical rag. The curious may inspect some choice examples of this simian humour in Herr Fuchs's interesting work.[13]