The Magnificent Montez: From Courtesan to ConvertWyndham, Horace
History
The Magnificent Montez: From Courtesan to Convert
Wyndham, Horace
Montez, Lola, 1818-1861
Paskievich then dealt his next card. This was to instruct his
understrapper to fill the theatre with a rabble and have her hissed
off the stage. Lola, however, was equal to the occasion. Advancing to
the footlights, before the terror-stricken manager could stop her, she
pointed to Colonel Abrahamowicz, sitting in a box, and exclaimed:
"Ladies and gentlemen, there is the dastard who attempts to revenge
himself on a pure woman who has scorned his infamous suggestions! I
ask your protection!"
Accompanied by M. Lesniowski, the editor of the _Warsaw Gazette_, she
returned to her lodgings, wondering what would happen next. She was
soon to discover, for the angry Colonel and a squad of police arrived
with a warrant for her arrest as an "undesirable." When, however, they
announced their purpose, she flourished a pistol in their faces and
declared that she would put a bullet through the first of them who
came near her. Realising that she meant what she said, and not anxious
to qualify for cheap martyrdom, Colonel Abrahamowicz was tactician
enough to withdraw. In the meantime, the public, learning what had
happened, sided with Lola and raised lusty shouts of "Down with the
Viceroy! Long live the Montez!"
Paskievich, who had crushed with an iron hand the rebellion of 1831,
had a short and sharp way with incipient revolutionaries; and, calling
out the troops, cleared the streets at the point of the bayonet. While
they were thus occupied, Lola slipped off to the French consul and
suggested that he should grant her his protection as a national. With
characteristic gallantry, he met her wishes. None the less, she had to
leave Warsaw the next morning, under escort to the frontier.
There were reprisals for a number of those who had taken her part.
Thus the manager of the theatre and the editor of the _Warsaw Gazette_
were dismissed; M. Steinkeller was imprisoned; and a dozen students
were publicly flogged.
"Tranquillity has been restored," was the official view of the
situation.
According to Lola herself (not, by the way, a very sound authority)
she went straight from Warsaw and the clutches of the lustful
Paskievich to St. Petersburg. Considering, however, that Poland was at
that period under the domination of the Czar, it is highly improbable
that, after her expulsion, she could have set foot in Russia without
a passport. Had she been sufficiently daring to make the experiment,
she would assuredly have been clapped into fetters and packed off to
Siberia.
Lola's motto was "courage, and shuffle the cards." Undeterred by her
previous failure there, she went back to Paris, to try her luck a
second time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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