The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection. George Fraser MacDonald
her anyway.
She was, it seemed, the supreme power in Bavaria. Ludwig was right under her thumb, she had swept out the hostile Ultramontane cabinet and had it replaced largely with creatures of her own, and despite the fact that she was a staunch Protestant, the Catholic hierarchy were powerless against her. The professors, who count for much more there than do ours in England, were solidly against her, but the students were violently split. Some detested her, and had rioted before her windows, but others, calling themselves the Allemania, constituted themselves her champions and even her bodyguard, and were forever clashing with her opponents. Some of these Allemania were pointed out to me, in their bright scarlet caps; they were a tough-looking crew, tight-mouthed and cold-eyed and given to strutting and barking, and people got out of their way pretty sharp.
However, with Ludwig infatuated by her, Lola was firmly in the saddle, and according to one outspoken French journalist whose story I read, her supremacy was causing alarm far outside Bavaria. There were rumours that she was an agent of Palmerston, set on to foment revolution in Germany; to the other powers, striving to hold down a growing popular discontent that was spreading throughout Europe, she appeared to be a dangerous threat to the old regime. At least one attempt had been made to assassinate her; Metternich, the arch-reactionary master of Austria, had tried to bribe her to leave Germany for good. The truth was that in those days the world was on the edge of general revolution; we were coming out of the old age and into the new, and anything that was a focus of disorder or instability was viewed with consternation by the authorities. So Lola was not popular; the papers fumed against her, clergymen damned her in their sermons as a Jezebel and a Sempronia, and the ordinary folk were taught to regard her as a fiend in human shape—all the worse because the shape was beautiful.
Here ends Professor Flashman’s historical lecture, much of it cribbed from a history book, but some of it at least learned that first day in the Munich beer-gardens.
One thing I was pretty sure of, and it flies in the face of history: whatever may be said, Lola was secretly admired by the common people. They might shake their heads and look solemn whenever her cavalry escort drove a way for her through a crowd of protesting students; they might look shocked when they heard of the orgies in the Barerstrasse palace; they might exclaim in horror when her Allemania horse-whipped an editor and smashed his presses—but the men inwardly loved her for the gorgeous hoyden she was, and the women hid their satisfaction that one of their own sex was setting Europe by the ears. Whenever the insolent, tempestuous Montez provoked some new scandal, there was no lack of those who thought, “Good for you,” and quite a few who said it openly.
And what the devil did she want with me? Well, I had come to Munich to find out, so I scribbled a note that Sunday evening, addressed to the Chamberlain Lauengram, saying that I had arrived and was at his disposal. Then I wandered over to the Residenz Palace, and looked at Lola’s portrait in the public gallery—that “Gallery of Beauties” in which Ludwig had assembled pictures of the loveliest women of his day. There were princesses, countesses, actresses, and the daughter of the Munich town-crier, among others, and Lola looking unusually nun-like in a black dress and wearing a come-to-Jesus expression.20 Underneath it was inscribed a verse written by the king, who was given to poetry, which finished up:
Oh, soft and beauteous as a deer
Art thou, of Andalusian race!
Well, he was probably in a position to know about that. And to think that only a few years ago she had been a penniless dancer being hooted off a London stage.
I had hoped, considering the urgency of Lauengram’s original letter to me, to be bidden to Lola’s palace on the Monday, but that day and the next went by, and still no word. But I was patient, and kept to my hotel, and on the Wednesday morning I was rewarded, I was finishing breakfast in my room, still in my dressing-gown, when there was a great flurry in the passage, and a lackey came to announce the arrival of the Freiherr von Starnberg, whoever he might be. There was much clashing and stamping, two cuirassiers in full fig appeared behind the lackey and stationed themselves like statues on either side of my doorway, and then in between them strolled the man himself, a gay young spark who greeted me with a flashing smile and outstretched hand.
“Herr Rittmeister Flashman?” says he. “My privilege to welcome you to Bavaria. Starnberg, very much at your service.” And he clicked his heels, bowing. “You’ll forgive my French, but it’s better than my English.”
“Better than my German, at any rate,” says I, taking stock of him. He was about twenty, of middle height and very slender, with a clean-cut, handsome face, brown curls, and the wisp of a moustache on his upper lip. A very cool, jaunty gentleman, clad in the tight tunic and breeches of what I took to be a hussar regiment, for he had a dolman over his shoulder and a light sabre trailing at his hip. He was sizing me up at the same time.
“Dragoon?” says he.
“No, hussar.”
“English light cavalry mounts must be infernally strong, then,” says he, coolly. “Well, no matter. Forgive my professional interest. Have I interrupted your breakfast?”
I assured him he had not.
“Splendid. Then if you’ll oblige me by getting dressed, we’ll lose no more time. Lola can’t abide to be kept waiting.” And he lit a cheroot and began to survey the room. “Damnable places, these hotels. Couldn’t stay in one myself.”
I pointed out that I had been kept kicking my heels in one for the past three days, and he laughed.
“Well, girls will be girls, you know,” says he. “We can’t expect ’em to hurry for mere men, however much they expect us to jump to it. Lola’s no different from the rest—in that respect.”
“You seem to know her very well,” says I.
“Well enough,” says he negligently, sitting himself on the edge of a table and swinging a polished boot.
“For a messenger, I mean,” says I, to take some of the starch out of him. But he only grinned.
“Oh, anything to oblige a lady, you know. I fulfil other functions, when I’m so inclined.” And he regarded me with an insolent blue eye. “I don’t wish to hurry you, old fellow, but we are wasting time. Not that I mind, but she certainly will.”
“And we mustn’t have that.”
“No, indeed. I imagine you have some experience of the lady’s fine Latin temper. By God, I’d tame it out of her if she was mine. But she’s not, thank heaven. I don’t have to humour her tantrums.”
“You don’t, eh?”
“Not hers, nor anyone else’s,” says Master von Starnberg, and took a turn round the room whistling.
Cocksure men irritate me as a rule, but it was difficult to take offence at this affable young sprig, and I had a feeling that it wouldn’t do me much good if I did, so while he lounged in my sitting-room I retired to the bed-chamber to dress. I decided to wear my Cherrypicker rig, with all the trimmings of gold-laced blue tunic and tight pants, and when I emerged Starnberg cocked an eye and whistled appreciatively.
“Saucy regimentals,” says he. “Very pretty indeed. Lola may not mind too much having been kept waiting, after all.”
“Tell me,” I said, “since you seem to know so much: why do you suppose she sent for me?—I’m assuming you know that she did.”
“Oh, aye,” says he. “Well, now, knowing Lola, I suggest you look in your mirror. Doesn’t that suggest an answer?”
“Come now,” says I, “I know Lola, too, and I flatter as easily as the next man. But she would hardly bring me all the way from England, just to …”
“Why not?” says he. “She brought me all the way from Hungary. Shall we go?”
He led the way down to the street, the two cuirassiers marching at our heels, and showed me into a coach that was waiting at the door. As he swung himself in beside me, with his hand on the window-frame,