"What has happened to me?" he muttered feebly. "I am bewitched." Then, as the newcomer stood smiling at him in all her warm loveliness, he found his tongue. "Mademoiselle, you say you can dance. Well, let me see what you can do. Count Rechberg, you may leave us." "Do I dance here, in this room, Your Majesty?" "Certainly." Lola wanted nothing better. The opportunity for which she had been planning and scheming ever since she left Paris had come at last. Well, she would make the most of it. Not in the least perturbed that there was no accompaniment, and no audience but His Majesty, she executed a _pas seul_ there and then. It was a "royal performance," and eminently successful. Her feet tripped lightly across the polished floor, and danced their way straight into Ludwig's heart. "You shall dance before the public," he announced. "I will myself give orders to the director of the Hof Theatre." Luise von Kobell, when a schoolgirl, encountered her by chance just after her arrival, and thus records the impression she received: As I was walking in the Briennerstrasse, not far from the Bayersdorf Palace, I saw a veiled lady, wearing a black gown and carrying a fan, coming towards me. Something flashed across my vision, and I suddenly stood still, completely dazzled by the eyes into which I stared, and which shone from a pale countenance that lit up with a laughing expression at my bewilderment. Then she swept past me; and I, forgetting what my governess had said about looking round, stared after her until she disappeared.... "That," said my father, when I reached home and recounted my adventure, "must have been Lola Montez, the Spanish dancer." The next evening little Fraeulein von Kobell saw her again at the Hof Theatre, where her first appearance before the Munich public was made on October 10, 1846. Lola Montez assumed the centre of the stage. She was not dressed in the customary tights and short skirts of a ballerina, but in a Spanish costume of silk and lace, in which shone at intervals a diamond. It seemed as if fire darted from her wonderful blue eyes, and she bowed like one of the Graces at the King in the royal box. She danced after the manner of her country, bending on her hips and alternating one posture with another, each rivalling the former one in beauty. While she was dancing she held the attention of all; everybody's eyes followed her sinuous movements, now indicative of glowing passion, now of frolicsomeness. Not until she ceased her rhythmic swayings was the spell interrupted. The audience went mad with rapture, and the entire dance had to be repeated over and over again. Ludwig, ensconced in the royal box, could not take his eyes off her. During an _entr'acte_ he scribbled a verse: