First was a personal friend of the writer of this reply to the unmanly attack of the Marquis Auguste Papon. And we have reason to remember it, for the connection of Henry Cole with the most fascinating woman of her day led to a duel in Hyde Park, of which that lady was the immediate cause, between the writer and a British officer who was so ungallant as to seek to check the enthusiasm created by her scarcely paralleled acting. To him succeeded Sir John Anstruther, and after Sir John the celebrated Horace Claggett. In what order their successors came we do not recollect, but of those who knew Madame Vestris in all the intimacy of the most tender friendship were Handsome Jack, Captain Best, Lord Edward Thynne, and Lord Castlereagh. These things were no secrets to the thousands who, fascinated by her beauty and the perfection of her acting, nevertheless thronged the theatre she was admitted to have conducted with the most amiable propriety and skill. On the contrary, they were as much matters of general knowledge among people of the first rank and fashion as the sun at noon-day. And yet what gentleman ever presumed to affix to the name of this gifted woman, whose very disregard of the opinion of those who hypocritically and _sub rosa_ pursued in nearly ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the same course--what gentleman, we ask, ever dared to commit himself so far as to term her a "courtesan"? There was a good deal more of it, for the "Reply" ran to seventy-six pages. The title-page of this counterblast ran: LOLA MONTEZ or A REPLY TO THE "PRIVATE HISTORY AND MEMOIRS" of THAT CELEBRATED LADY RECENTLY PUBLISHED By THE MARQUIS PAPON FORMERLY SECRETARY TO THE KING OF BAVARIA AND FOR A PERIOD THE PROFESSED FRIEND AND ATTENDANT of THE COUNTESS OF LANDSFELD _Stet Nomnis Umbra_--Junius NEW YORK 1851 IV