As at Her Majesty's, so at the Opera. Lola's first appearance was her last. For the rest of the year, as far as I can learn, she was out of an engagement. She had, no doubt, made some money during her German and Russian tour, and Liszt would not have forgotten her when he started on his southern tour at the end of April.
If her association with him had begotten in Lola Montez a thirst for wit and genius, she had every chance of slaking it in Paris. There were giants on the earth in those days, and they were all gathered together on the banks of the Seine. It is not too much to say that since the Medici ruled in Florence, no capital has boasted so brilliant an assemblage of men of genius as did Paris under the paternal government of July. In the year '44, Victor Hugo, attended by a score of minor poets, daily appeared on his balcony to acknowledge the homage of the public; Lamartine was dividing his attention between politics and literature. Alfred de Musset was wrecking his constitution by spasms of debauchery. Balzac was dodging his creditors, playing truant from the National Guard, and finding time to write his "Comédie Humaine"; Théophile Gautier, a man of thirty-three, if he had not yet received the full meed of his genius, was already well known and widely appreciated. Alexandre Dumas had long since become a national institution, and his son was looking out for copy among the ladies of the _demi-monde_. Delphine Gay was writing her brilliant "Lettres Parisiennes" for her husband's newspaper. The Salon was still rejecting the masterpieces of Delacroix, but Vernet was painting the ceiling of the Palais Bourbon. Auber, though past the prime of life, had not yet scored his greatest success. Paris was like Athens in the age of Pericles.
Life was really worth living then, when Louis Phillippe was king. He was an honest, kindly-natured man, this pear-headed potentate, who reigned, "comme la corniche règne autour d'un plafond." He was the king of the _bourgeois_, and he looked it every inch, with his white felt hat and respectable umbrella; but in the calm sunshine of his reign the arts flourished and the world was gay. Those days before the Revolution remind us of that strange picture in our National Gallery, "The Eve of the Deluge." Paris, as the old stagers regretfully assure us, was Paris then, and not the caravanserai of all the nations of the world. The good Americans who died then, had they gone to Paris, would have thought they had reached the wrong destination. Men of Pontus and Asia had not then made the French capital their own. The invasion of the Barbarians, says Gustave Claudin, took place in 1848. They came, not conducted by Attila, but by the newly-constructed railways. As these strangers had plenty of money to spend, they naturally sought the most fashionable quarters.