Except for the advertisement it gave her, she could gain no real advantage from this odd introduction to a king. For, next day, she received a secret, but overwhelmingly official hint that an instant departure not only from Berlin, but from Prussia, too, would be one of the wisest moves in her whole career. She went.
Lola Montez, the Spanish dancer, was billed at a Munich theater. She danced there but three times. For, on the third evening, the royal box was occupied by a drowsy-eyed sexagenarian whose uniform coat was ablaze with decorations.
The old gentleman was Ludwig I. ~Dei gratia~, King of Bavaria, a ruler who up to this time had been beloved of his subjects; and whose worst vice, in his people's eyes, was that he encouraged art rather than arms.
Ludwig watched breathlessly while Lola danced. Afterward he sent for her to come to the royal box and be presented to him. She never danced again in Bavaria.
For next day Ludwig introduced her at court as "my very good friend." Lola dazzled Munich with her jewels and her equipages. The king presented her with a huge and hideous mansion. He stretched the laws by having her declared a Bavarian subject. And, having done that, he bestowed upon her the titles of "Baroness von Rosenthal and Countess von Landfeld." Next, he granted her an annuity of twenty thousand florins. Things were coming Lola's way, and coming fast.
The Bavarians did not dislike her--at first. When Ludwig forced his queen to receive her and to pin upon the dancer-emeritus' breast the Order of St. Theresa, there was, to be sure, a shocked murmur. But it soon died down. Had Lola been content with her luck, she might have continued indefinitely in her new and delightfully comfortable mode of life.
But, according to Lola's theory, a mortal who is content with success would be content with failure. And she strove to play a greater role than the fat one assigned to her by the love-sick old king.
She had read of Pompadour and other royal favorites whose vagrom whims swayed the destinies of Europe. She sought to be a world power; the power behind the throne; the woman who could mold the politics of a dynasty. And she laid her plans accordingly.
It was not even a dream, this new ambition of Lola's. It was a comic-opera fantasy. Bavaria, at best, was only a little German state with no special voice in the congress of nations. And Lola herself had no more aptitude for politics than she had for dancing. Nor did she stop to consider that Germans in 1846 were much more likely to tolerate a fair foreigner's meddling with their puppet king's domestic affairs than with matters of public welfare.