But Lola Montez was not the woman to sit down calmly under defeat. A few weeks later we find her tripping it on the stage at Dresden, and at Berlin, where the King of Prussia himself was among her applauders. But such success as the Continent brought her was too small to keep her now deplenished purse supplied. She fell on evil days, and for two years led a precarious life--now, we are told, singing in Brussels streets to keep starvation from her side, now playing the political spy in Russia, and again, by a capricious turn of fortune's wheel, being fêted and courted in the exalted circles of Vienna and Paris. From the French capital she made her way to Warsaw, where stirring adventures awaited her, for before she had been there many days the Polish Viceroy, General Paskevitch, cast his aged but lascivious eyes on her young beauty and sent an equerry to desire her presence at the palace. "He offered her" (so runs the story as told by her own lips) "the gift of a splendid country estate, and would load her with diamonds besides. The poor old man was a comic sight to look upon--unusually short in stature; and every time he spoke he threw his head back and opened his mouth so wide as to expose the artificial gold roof of his palate. A death's head making love to a lady could not have been a more horrible or disgusting sight. These generous gifts were most respectfully and very decidedly declined." But General Paskevitch was not disposed to be spurned with impunity. The contemptuous beauty must be punished for her scorn of his wooing; and, when she made her appearance on the stage the same night it was to a greeting of hisses by the Viceroy's hirelings. The next night brought the same experience; but when on the third night the storm arose, "Lola, in a rage, rushed down to the footlights and declared that those hisses had been set at her by the director, because she had refused certain gifts from the old Prince, his master. Then came a tremendous shower of applause from the audience, and the old Princess, who was present, both nodded her head and clapped her hands to the enraged and fiery little Lola." A tumultuous crowd of Poles escorted her to her lodgings that night. She was the heroine of the hour, who had dared to give open defiance to the hated Viceroy. The next morning Warsaw was "bubbling and raging with the signs of an incipient revolution. When Lola Montez was apprised of the fact that her arrest was ordered she barricaded her door; and when the police arrived she sat behind it with a pistol in her hand, declaring that she would certainly shoot the first man who should dare to break in." Fortunately for Lola, her pistol was not used. The French Consul came to her rescue, claiming her as a subject of France, and thus protecting her from arrest. But the order that she should quit Warsaw was peremptory, and Warsaw saw her no more.