Thinking that these claims to get into touch with the dead should be subjected to a more adequate test, Mr. Harry Price, director of the National Laboratory of Psychical Research, arranged for Rudi Schneider to give a sample of his powers to a committee of experts. As a convincing test, Major Hervey de Montmorency (a nephew of the Mr. Francis Leigh with whom Lola had once lived in Paris) suggested that the accomplished "Olga" should be asked the name of his uncle (which was different from his own) and the circumstances under which they had parted. This was done, and "Olga" promised to give full details at the next sitting. But the promise was not kept. "She conveniently shelved every question," says the official report. Altogether, Rudi Schneider's stock fell. VI The body of Lola Montez, Countess of Landsfeld, and Canoness of the Order of St. Therese, has now been crumbling in the dust of a distant grave, far from her own kith and kindred, for upwards of seventy years. Her name, however, will still be remembered when that of other women who have filled a niche in history will have been forgotten. Lola Montez was no common adventuress. By her beauty and intelligence and magnetism she weaved a spell on well nigh all who came within her radius. Never any member of her sex quite like this one. Had she been born in the Middle Ages, superstition would have had it that Venus herself was revisiting the haunts of men in fresh guise. But she would then probably have perished at the stake, accused of witchcraft by her political opponents. As it was, even in the year 1848 a sovereign demanded that a professional exorcist should "drive the devil out of her." To present Lola Montez at her true worth, to adjust the balance between her merits and her demerits, is a difficult task. A woman of a hundred opposing facets; of rare culture and charm, and of whims and fancies and strange enthusiasms each battling with the other. Thus, by turns tender and callous, hot-tempered and soft-hearted; childishly simple in some things, and amazingly shrewd in others; trusting and suspicious; arrogant and humble, yet supremely indifferent to public opinion; grateful for kindness and loyal to her friends, but neither forgetting nor forgiving an injury. Men had treated her worse than she had treated them.