Liszt allowed her to make love to him, and amused himself with this dangerous sweetheart. But without any conviction, without any real curiosity. She annoyed, she irritated him during his hours of work. Before long he planned to escape, and, having arranged everything with the hotel porter, he departed without leaving any address, but not without having first locked this most wearisome of inamoratas up in her room. For twelve hours Lola raised a fearful uproar, breaking whatever she could lay her hands on. Liszt, however, scenting this possibility, had settled the bill in advance. But the incident does not redound to his credit, for the spectacle of a distinguished artist bribing a lackey to smuggle him out of an hotel and imprison in her bedroom the woman with whom he had been living, is a sorry one. II Having had enough of Germany for the time being, Lola decided to see what France had to offer. "The only place for a woman of spirit," she once said, "is Paris." Accordingly she betook herself there. As soon as she arrived, she secured lodgings in a modest hotel near the Palais Royal; and, well aware of her limitations, took some dancing lessons from a ballet-master in the rue Lepelletier. When she had taken what she considered enough, she called on Leon Pillet, the director of the _Academie_. "You have, of course, already heard of my immense success in London," she announced with an assured air. M. Pillet had not heard of it. But this did not matter. As had been the case with Lumley before him, Lola's ravishing smile inflamed his susceptible heart; and he promptly engaged her to dance in the ballet that was to follow Halevy's _Il Lazzarone_, then in active rehearsal. Lola's debut as a _premiere danseuse_ was made on March 30, 1844. It was not a successful one. Far from it. The fact was, the Parisians, accustomed to the dreamy and sylph-like pirouettings of Cerito and Elssler and Taglioni, and their own Adele Dumilatre, could not appreciate the vigorous _cachuchas_ and _boleros_ now offered them. When they voiced their disapproval, Lola lost the one thing she could never keep--her temper. She made a _moue_ at the audience; and, if de Mirecourt is to be trusted, pulled off her garters (a second authority says a more intimate item of attire) and flung them with a gesture of contempt among the jeering crowd in the first row of stalls. As may be imagined, the Press was unsympathetic towards this "demonstration." "We will avoid damaging with our strictures," remarked _Le Constitutionnel_ in its next issue, "a pretty young woman who, before making her debut, has obviously not had time to study our preferences."