"It was suddenly announced that the superior officers of the Caucasian army were without, desiring audience. The very subject of the previous conversation rendered it desirable that Lola Montez should not be seen in conference with the Emperor and the Minister of the Interior; so she was thrust into a closet, and the door locked. The conference between the officers and the Emperor was short but stormy. Nicholas got into a towering rage. It seemed to the imprisoned Lola that there was a whirlwind outside; and womanly curiosity to hear what it was about [did she then understand Russian?], joined with the great difficulty of keeping from coughing, made her position a strangely embarrassing one. But the worst of it was, in the midst of this grand quarrel the parties all went out of the room, and forgot Lola Montez, who was locked up in the closet. For a whole hour she was kept in this durance vile, reflecting upon the somewhat confined and cramping honours she was receiving from Royalty, when the Emperor, who seems to have come to himself before Count Benkendorf did, came running back out of breath, and unlocked the door, and not only begged pardon for his forgetfulness, in a manner which only a man of his accomplished address could do, but presented the victim with a thousand roubles, saying laughingly: 'I have made up my mind whenever I imprison any of my subjects unjustly, I will pay them for their time and suffering.' And Lola Montez answered him: 'Ah, sire, I am afraid that rule will make a poor man of you.' He laughed heartily, and replied: 'Well, I am happy in being able to settle with you, anyhow.'"
Lola makes here a rather heavy draft on the reader's credulity. However, from the nice things she has to say about His Imperial Majesty, it is clear that she had been admitted at one time or another to his presence. Had not Nicholas I. been a pattern of the domestic virtues, we might have attributed his embarrassment at Lola's being discovered in his closet, and the donation of the thousand roubles, to reasons entirely unconnected with the Caucasus. After all, Lola may have argued, if she had been courted by a king, why should she not have been consulted by an emperor?