The Prince Consort was shocked at the "liberty." Frederick William, however, being more broad-minded, cracked a Teutonic jest.
"Lola is a Lorelei!" he declared, with an appreciative grin, when the episode was reported to him. "What will she be up to next?"
An inevitable result of Liszt's dalliance with his new Calypso in the various capitals that they visited together during the months that followed was to shatter the relations that had existed for years between himself and Madame d'Agoult. The virtuoso emerged from the business badly, for the woman he had discarded in summary fashion for a younger and more attractive one had sacrificed her name and her reputation for his sake, and had also presented him with three pledges of mutual affection. Infuriated at his callousness, she afterwards, as "Daniel Stern," relieved her outraged feelings in a novel ("written to calm her agitated soul"), Nélida, where Liszt, under a transparent disguise, figured as "Guermann Regnier."
But the pace was too hot to last. Still, it was Liszt, and not Lola, who cooled first. "With Lola, as with others, known and unknown, it was," observes William Wallace, "Da capo al Segno." The story of the final rupture between them, as given by Guy de Pourtales, has in it something of the element of farce: Liszt allowed her to make love to him, and amused himself with this dangerous sweetheart. But without any conviction, without any real curiosity. She annoyed, she irritated him during his hours of work. Before long he planned to escape, and, having arranged everything with the hotel porter, he departed without leaving any address, but not without having first locked this most wearisome of inamoratas up in her room. For twelve hours Lola raised a fearful uproar, breaking whatever she could lay her hands on.
Liszt, however, scenting this possibility, had settled the bill in advance.
But the incident does not redound to his credit, for the spectacle of a distinguished artist bribing a lackey to smuggle him out of an hotel and imprison in her bedroom the woman with whom he had been living, is a sorry one.
II
Having had enough of Germany for the time being, Lola decided to see what France had to offer. "The only place for a woman of spirit," she once said, "is Paris." Accordingly she betook herself there. As soon as she arrived, she secured lodgings in a modest hotel near the Palais Royal; and, well aware of her limitations, took some dancing lessons from a ballet-master in the rue Lepelletier. When she had taken what she considered enough, she called on Léon Pillet, the director of the Académie.