To a passionate admirer of beauty like Louis her loveliness was an all-sufficient excuse for her amazing audacity. His aide-de-camp was right. The woman was well worth seeing. As he gazed upon her youth glowed anew in his sixty-year-old frame, the blood coursed as fiercely as in the time long gone by. Those who saw Lola knew a second spring. Collecting his faculties, the King granted the dancer's prayer--she received his command to appear at the Court Theatre; but he was in no haste to dismiss the suppliant. Lola, says one writer, came, saw, and conquered. The King yielded to her at the first shot. Lola's detractors relate that, glancing at her magnificent bust, he asked in wonder if such charms could be of nature's making, whereupon the lady, there and then ripping up her corsage, dispelled his doubts. They can believe the story who like to; it sounds in the highest degree improbable. But from this first interview dated the enthralment of the King.
Not only grey-headed rulers but tiny school-girls felt the power of the enchantress. Louise von Kobell tells us how, when a child, she saw Lola Montez.[12]
"On the 9th October, 1846, as I was going down Briennerstrasse, near the Bayersdorf Palace, I saw coming my way a lady, gowned in black, with a veil thrown over her head, and a fan in her hand. Suddenly something seemed to flash across my vision, and I stood stock still, gazing into the eyes that had dazzled me. They shone upon me from a pale countenance, which assumed a laughing expression before my bewildered stare. Then she went, or rather swept on, past me. I forgot all my governess's injunctions against looking round, and stood staring after her, till she disappeared from view. Like her, I told myself, must have been the fairies in the nursery tales. I returned home breathless, and told them of my adventure. 'That,' said my father, grimly, 'must have been the Spanish dancer, Lola Montez.'
"I went to the Court Theatre on Saturday, the 10th October; I came much too early to my seat, and read full of eagerness the announcement: '_Der verwunschene Prinz_, a play in three acts, by J. von Plötz. During the two _entr'actes_, Mademoiselle Lola Montez of Madrid will appear in her Spanish national dances.' Full of impatience I saw the curtain rise, sat through the first act, and saw the curtain fall again. Now it rose once more, and I saw my fairy of yesterday--Lola Montez.