"For her habits of life, they are simple. She eats little, and of plain food, cooked in the English fashion; drinks little, keeps good hours, rises early, and labours much. The morning, before and after breakfast, is devoted to what we must call semi-public business. The innumerable letters she receives and affairs she has to arrange, keep herself and her secretary constantly employed during some hours. At breakfast she holds a sort of _levée_ of persons of all sorts--ministers _in esse_ or _in posse_, professors, artists, English strangers, and foreigners from all parts of the world. As is usual with women of an active mind, she is a great talker; but although an egotist, and with her full share of the vanity of her sex, she understands the art of conversation sufficiently never to be wearisome. Indeed, although capable of violent but evanescent passions--of deep but not revengeful animosities, and occasionally of trivialities and weaknesses very often found in persons suddenly raised to great power--she can be, and almost always is, a very charming person and a delightful companion. Her manners are distinguished, she is a graceful and hospitable hostess, and she understands the art of dressing to perfection.
"The fair despot is passionately fond of homage. She is merciless in her man-killing propensities, and those gentlemen attending her _levées_ or her _soirées_, who are perhaps too much absorbed in politics or art to be enamoured of her personal charms, willingly pay respect to her mental attractions and conversational powers.
"On the other hand, Lola Montez has many of the faults recorded of others in like situations. She loves power for its own sake; she is too hasty and too steadfast in her dislikes; she has not sufficiently learned to curb the passion which seems natural to her Spanish blood; she is capricious, and quite capable, when her temper is inflamed, of rudeness, which, however, she is the first to regret and to apologise for. One absorbing idea she has which poisons her peace. She has devoted her life to the extirpation of the Jesuits, root and branch, from Bavaria. She is too ready to believe in their active influence, and too early overlooks their passive influence. Every one whom she does not like, her prejudice transforms into a Jesuit. Jesuits stare at her in the streets, and peep out from the corners of her rooms. All the world, adverse to herself, are puppets moved to mock and annoy her by these dark and invisible agents. At the same time she has, doubtless, had good cause for this animosity; but these restless suspicions are a weakness quite incompatible with the strength of mind, the force of character, and determination of purpose she exhibits in other respects.