In the sisterhood that she joined the new name of Mlle Gautier was Sister Augustine. As such, she lived a Carmelite nun for thirty-two years. But time did not hang heavy on her hands, for, in addition to religious exercises and domestic tasks, she occupied herself with painting miniatures and composing verses. "I am so happy here," she wrote from her cell, "that I much regret having delayed too long entering this holy place. The real calm and peace I have now discovered have made me imagine all my previous life an evil dream."
The example that Lola Montez was setting was to be followed, fifty years later, by another member of her calling. This was Eve Lavalliére, who, after a distinctly hectic career, cut herself adrift from the footlights of Paris and entered the mission-field of North Africa. "Here at your feet," she says in one of her letters, "lies the vilest, lowest, and most contemptible object on earth, a worm from the dung-heap, the most infamous, the most soiled of all creatures. Lord, I am but a poor sheep in your flock!"
There is also something of a parallel between the career of Lola Montez and that of Theodora, who, once in the circus ring, and, at the start, a lady of decidedly easy virtue, afterwards became the consort of the Emperor Justinian and shared his throne. Like Lola, too, Theodora endeavoured to make amends for her early slips by voluntarily abandoning the pomp and power she had once enjoyed and giving herself up to the redemption of "fallen women."
III Perhaps the "Spirits" resented being abandoned by her in summary fashion; perhaps she had overtaxed her energies addressing outdoor meetings in all weathers. At any rate, and whatever the cause, while she was travelling in the country during the winter of 1860, Lola Montez was suddenly stricken down by a mysterious illness. As it baffled the hospital doctors, she had to be taken back to New York. There, instead of getting better, she gradually got worse, developing consumption, followed by partial paralysis.
"What a study for the thoughtless; what a sermon on the inevitable result of human vanity!" was the ghoulish comment of a scribbler.
Rufus Blake, an entrepreneur, under whose banner she had once starred, has some reminiscences of her at this period. "She lived," he says, "in strict retirement, reading religious books, and steadily, calmly, hopefully preparing for death, fully convinced that consumption had snapped the pillars of her life and that she was soon to make her final exit."