Part 18

When the news of this bloody affair reached Houston he leaped forth to the combat like a lion. He was made commander-in-chief of the scanty Texan forces. He managed to rally about seven hundred men, and set out against Santa Anna with little in the way of equipment, and with nothing but the flame of frenzy to stimulate his followers. By march and countermarch the hostile forces came face to face near the shore of San Jacinto Bay, not far from the present city of Houston. Slowly they moved upon each other, when Houston halted, and his sharpshooters raked the Mexican battle-line with terrible effect. Then Houston uttered the cry:

"Remember the Alamo!"

With deadly swiftness he led his men in a charge upon Santa Anna's lines. The Mexicans were scattered as by a mighty wind, their commander was taken prisoner, and Mexico was forced to give its recognition to Texas as a free republic, of which General Houston became the first president.

This was the climax of Houston's life, but the end of it leaves us with something still to say. Long after his marriage with Miss Allen he took an Indian girl to wife and lived with her quite happily. She was a very beautiful woman, a half-breed, with the English name of Tyania Rodgers. Very little, however, is known of her life with Houston. Later still--in 1840--he married a lady from Marion, Alabama, named Margaret Moffette Lea. He was then in his forty-seventh year, while she was only twenty-one; but again, as with his Indian wife, he knew nothing but domestic tranquillity. These later experiences go far to prove the truth of what has already been given as the probable cause of his first mysterious failure to make a woman happy.

After Texas entered the Union, in 1845, Houston was elected to the United States Senate, in which he served for thirteen years. In 1852, 1856, and 1860, as a Southerner who opposed any movement looking toward secession, he was regarded as a possible presidential candidate; but his career was now almost over, and in 1863, while the Civil War--which he had striven to prevent--was at its height, he died.

LOLA MONTEZ AND KING LUDWIG OF BAVARIA

Lola Montez! The name suggests dark eyes and abundant hair, lithe limbs and a sinuous body, with twining hands and great eyes that gleam with a sort of ebon splendor. One thinks of Spanish beauty as one hears the name; and in truth Lola Montez justified the mental picture.

She was not altogether Spanish, yet the other elements that entered into her mercurial nature heightened and vivified her Castilian traits. Her mother was a Spaniard--partly Moorish, however. Her father was an Irishman. There you have it--the dreamy romance of Spain, the exotic touch of the Orient, and the daring, unreasoning vivacity of the Celt.

This woman during the forty-three years of her life had adventures innumerable, was widely known in Europe and America, and actually lost one king his throne. Her maiden name was Marie Dolores Eliza Rosanna Gilbert. Her father was a British officer, the son of an Irish knight, Sir Edward Gilbert. Her mother had been a danseuse named Lola Oliver. "Lola" is a diminutive of Dolores, and as "Lola" she became known to the world.

She lived at one time or another in nearly all the countries of Europe, and likewise in India, America, and Australia. It would be impossible to set down here all the sensations that she achieved. Let us select the climax of her career and show how she overturned a kingdom, passing but lightly over her early and her later years.

She was born in Limerick in 1818, but her father's parents cast off their son and his young wife, the Spanish dancer. They went to India, and in 1825 the father died, leaving his young widow without a rupee; but she was quickly married again, this time to an officer of importance.

The former danseuse became a very conventional person, a fit match for her highly conventional husband; but the small daughter did not take kindly to the proprieties of life. The Hindu servants taught her more things than she should have known; and at one time her stepfather found her performing the danse du ventre. It was the Moorish strain inherited from her mother.

She was sent back to Europe, however, and had a sort of education in Scotland and England, and finally in Paris, where she was detected in an incipient flirtation with her music-master. There were other persons hanging about her from her fifteenth year, at which time her stepfather, in India, had arranged a marriage between her and a rich but uninteresting old judge. One of her numerous admirers told her this.

"What on earth am I to do?" asked little Lola, most naively.

"Why, marry me," said the artful adviser, who was Captain Thomas James; and so the very next day they fled to Dublin and were speedily married at Meath.

Lola's husband was violently in love with her, but, unfortunately, others were no less susceptible to her charms. She was presented at the vice-regal court, and everybody there became her victim. Even the viceroy, Lord Normanby, was greatly taken with her. This nobleman's position was such that Captain James could not object to his attentions, though they made the husband angry to a degree. The viceroy would draw her into alcoves and engage her in flattering conversation, while poor James could only gnaw his nails and let green-eyed jealousy prey upon his heart. His only recourse was to take her into the country, where she speedily became bored; and boredom is the death of love.

Later she went with Captain James to India. She endured a campaign in Afghanistan, in which she thoroughly enjoyed herself because of the attentions of the officers. On her return to London in 1842, one Captain Lennox was a fellow passenger; and their association resulted in an action for divorce, by which she was freed from her husband, and yet by a technicality was not able to marry Lennox, whose family in any case would probably have prevented the wedding.

Mrs. Mayne says, in writing on this point:

Even Lola never quite succeeded in being allowed to commit bigamy unmolested, though in later years she did commit it and took refuge in Spain to escape punishment.

The same writer has given a vivid picture of what happened soon after the divorce. Lola tried to forget her past and to create a new and brighter future. Here is the narrative:

Her Majesty's Theater was crowded on the night of June 10,1843. A new Spanish dancer was announced--"Dona Lola Montez." It was her debut, and Lumley, the manager, had been puffing her beforehand, as he alone knew how. To Lord Ranelagh, the leader of the dilettante group of fashionable young men, he had whispered, mysteriously:

"I have a surprise in store. You shall see."

So Ranelagh and a party of his friends filled the omnibus boxes, those tribunes at the side of the stage whence success or failure was pronounced. Things had been done with Lumley's consummate art; the packed house was murmurous with excitement. She was a raving beauty, said report--and then, those intoxicating Spanish dances! Taglioni, Cerito, Fanny Elssler, all were to be eclipsed.

Ranelagh's glasses were steadily leveled on the stage from the moment her entrance was imminent. She came on. There was a murmur of admiration--but Ranelagh made no sign. And then she began to dance. A sense of disappointment, perhaps? But she was very lovely, very graceful, "like a flower swept by the wind, she floated round the stage"--not a dancer, but, by George, a beauty! And still Ranelagh made no sign.

Yet, no. What low, sibilant sound is that? And then what confused, angry words from the tribunal? He turns to his friends, his eyes ablaze with anger, opera-glass in hand. And now again the terrible "Hiss-s-s!" taken up by the other box, and the words repeated loudly and more angrily even than before--the historic words which sealed Lola's doom at Her Majesty's Theater: "WHY, IT'S BETTY JAMES!"

She was, indeed, Betty James, and London would not accept her as Lola Montez. She left England and appeared upon the Continent as a beautiful virago, making a sensation--as the French would say, a succes de scandale--by boxing the ears of people who offended her, and even on one occasion horsewhipping a policeman who was in attendance on the King of Prussia. In Paris she tried once more to be a dancer, but Paris would not have her. She betook herself to Dresden and Warsaw, where she sought to attract attention by her eccentricities, making mouths at the spectators, flinging her garters in their faces, and one time removing her skirts and still more necessary garments, whereupon her manager broke off his engagement with her.

An English writer who heard a great deal of her and who saw her often about this time writes that there was nothing wonderful about her except "her beauty and her impudence." She had no talent nor any of the graces which make women attractive; yet many men of talent raved about her. The clever young journalist, Dujarrier, who assisted Emile Girardin, was her lover in Paris. He was killed in a duel and left Lola twenty thousand francs and some securities, so that she no longer had to sing in the streets as she did in Warsaw.

She now betook herself to Munich, the capital of Bavaria. That country was then governed by Ludwig I., a king as eccentric as Lola herself. He was a curious compound of kindliness, ideality, and peculiar ways. For instance, he would never use a carriage even on state occasions. He prowled around the streets, knocking off the hats of those whom he chanced to meet. Like his unfortunate descendant, Ludwig II., he wrote poetry, and he had a picture-gallery devoted to portraits of the beautiful women whom he had met.

He dressed like an English fox-hunter, with a most extraordinary hat, and what was odd and peculiar in others pleased him because he was odd and peculiar himself. Therefore when Lola made her first appearance at the Court Theater he was enchanted with her. He summoned her at once to the palace, and within five days he presented her to the court, saying as he did so:

"Meine Herren, I present you to my best friend."

In less than a month this curious monarch had given Lola the title of Countess of Landsfeld. A handsome house was built for her, and a pension of twenty thousand florins was granted her. This was in 1847. With the people of Munich she was unpopular. They did not mind the eccentricities of the king, since these amused them and did the country no perceptible harm; but they were enraged by this beautiful woman, who had no softness such as a woman ought to have. Her swearing, her readiness to box the ears of every one whom she disliked, the huge bulldog which accompanied her everywhere--all these things were beyond endurance.

She was discourteous to the queen, besides meddling with the politics of the kingdom. Either of these things would have been sufficient to make her hated. Together, they were more than the city of Munich could endure. Finally the countess tried to establish a new corps in the university. This was the last touch of all. A student who ventured to wear her colors was beaten and arrested. Lola came to his aid with all her wonted boldness; but the city was in commotion.

Daggers were drawn; Lola was hustled and insulted. The foolish king rushed out to protect her; and on his arm she was led in safety to the palace. As she entered the gates she turned and fired a pistol into the mob. No one was hurt, but a great rage took possession of the people. The king issued a decree closing the university for a year. By this time, however, Munich was in possession of a mob, and the Bavarians demanded that she should leave the country.

Ludwig faced the chamber of peers, where the demand of the populace was placed before him.

"I would rather lose my crown!" he replied.

The lords of Bavaria regarded him with grim silence; and in their eyes he read the determination of his people. On the following day a royal decree revoked Lola's rights as a subject of Bavaria, and still another decree ordered her to be expelled. The mob yelled with joy and burned her house. Poor Ludwig watched the tumult by the light of the leaping flames.

He was still in love with her and tried to keep her in the kingdom; but the result was that Ludwig himself was forced to abdicate. He had given his throne for the light love of this beautiful but half-crazy woman. She would have no more to do with him; and as for him, he had to give place to his son Maximilian. Ludwig had lost a kingdom merely because this strange, outrageous creature had piqued him and made him think that she was unique among women.

The rest of her career was adventurous. In England she contracted a bigamous marriage with a youthful officer, and within two weeks they fled to Spain for safety from the law. Her husband was drowned, and she made still another marriage. She visited Australia, and at Melbourne she had a fight with a strapping woman, who clawed her face until Lola fell fainting to the ground. It is a squalid record of horse-whippings, face-scratchings--in short, a rowdy life.

Her end was like that of Becky Sharp. In America she delivered lectures which were written for her by a clergyman and which dealt with the art of beauty. She had a temporary success; but soon she became quite poor, and took to piety, professing to be a sort of piteous, penitent Magdalen. In this role she made effective use of her beautiful dark hair, her pallor, and her wonderful eyes. But the violence of her disposition had wrecked her physically; and she died of paralysis in Astoria, on Long Island, in 1861. Upon her grave in Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn, there is a tablet to her memory, bearing the inscription: "Mrs. Eliza Gilbert, born 1818, died 1861."

What can one say of a woman such as this? She had no morals, and her manners were outrageous. The love she felt was the love of a she-wolf. Fourteen biographies of her have been written, besides her own autobiography, which was called The Story of a Penitent, and which tells less about her than any of the other books. Her beauty was undeniable. Her courage was the blended courage of the Celt, the Spaniard, and the Moor. Yet all that one can say of her was said by the elder Dumas when he declared that she was born to be the evil genius of every one who cared for her. Her greatest fame comes from the fact that in less than three years she overturned a kingdom and lost a king his throne.

LEON GAMBETTA AND LEONIE LEON

The present French Republic has endured for over forty years. Within that time it has produced just one man of extraordinary power and parts. This was Leon Gambetta. Other men as remarkable as he were conspicuous in French political life during the first few years of the republic; but they belonged to an earlier generation, while Gambetta leaped into prominence only when the empire fell, crashing down in ruin and disaster.

It is still too early to form an accurate estimate of him as a statesman. His friends praise him extravagantly. His enemies still revile him bitterly. The period of his political career lasted for little more than a decade, yet in that time it may be said that he lived almost a life of fifty years. Only a short time ago did the French government cause his body to be placed within the great Pantheon, which contains memorials of the heroes and heroines of France. But, though we may not fairly judge of his political motives, we can readily reconstruct a picture of him as a man, and in doing so recall his one romance, which many will remember after they have forgotten his oratorical triumphs and his statecraft.

Leon Gambetta was the true type of the southern Frenchman--what his countrymen call a meridional. The Frenchman of the south is different from the Frenchman of the north, for the latter has in his veins a touch of the viking blood, so that he is very apt to be fair-haired and blue-eyed, temperate in speech, and self-controlled. He is different, again, from the Frenchman of central France, who is almost purely Celtic. The meridional has a marked vein of the Italian in him, derived from the conquerors of ancient Gaul. He is impulsive, ardent, fiery in speech, hot-tempered, and vivacious to an extraordinary degree.

Gambetta, who was born at Cahors, was French only on his mother's side, since his father was of Italian birth. It is said also that somewhere in his ancestry there was a touch of the Oriental. At any rate, he was one of the most southern of the sons of southern France, and he showed the precocious maturity which belongs to a certain type of Italian. At twenty-one he had already been admitted to the French bar, and had drifted to Paris, where his audacity, his pushing nature, and his red-hot un-restraint of speech gave him a certain notoriety from the very first.

It was toward the end of the reign of Napoleon III. that Gambetta saw his opportunity. The emperor, weakened by disease and yielding to a sort of feeble idealism, gave to France a greater freedom of speech than it had enjoyed while he was more virile. This relaxation of control merely gave to his opponents more courage to attack him and his empire. Demagogues harangued the crowds in words which would once have led to their imprisonment. In the National Assembly the opposition did all within its power to hamper and defeat the policy of the government.

In short, republicanism began to rise in an ominous and threatening way; and at the head of republicanism in Paris stood forth Gambetta, with his impassioned eloquence, his stinging phrases, and his youthful boldness. He became the idol of that part of Paris known as Belleville, where artisans and laborers united with the rabble of the streets in hating the empire and in crying out for a republic.

Gambetta was precisely the man to voice the feelings of these people. Whatever polish he acquired in after years was then quite lacking; and the crudity of his manners actually helped him with the men whom he harangued. A recent book by M. Francis Laur, an ardent admirer of Gambetta, gives a picture of the man which may be nearly true of him in his later life, but which is certainly too flattering when applied to Gambetta in 1868, at the age of thirty.

How do we see Gambetta as he was at thirty? A man of powerful frame and of intense vitality, with thick, clustering hair, which he shook as a lion shakes its mane; olive-skinned, with eyes that darted fire, a resonant, sonorous voice, and a personal magnetism which was instantly felt by all who met him or who heard him speak. His manners were not refined. He was fond of oil and garlic. His gestures were often more frantic than impressive, so that his enemies called him "the furious fool." He had a trick of spitting while he spoke. He was by no means the sort of man whose habits had been formed in drawing-rooms or among people of good breeding. Yet his oratory was, of its kind, superb.

In 1869 Gambetta was elected by the Red Republicans to the Corps Legislatif. From the very first his vehemence and fire gained him a ready hearing. The chamber itself was arranged like a great theater, the members occupying the floor and the public the galleries. Each orator in addressing the house mounted a sort of rostrum and from it faced the whole assemblage, not noticing, as with us, the presiding officer at all. The very nature of this arrangement stimulated parliamentary speaking into eloquence and flamboyant oratory.

After Gambetta had spoken a few times he noticed in the gallery a tall, graceful woman, dressed in some neutral color and wearing long black gloves, which accentuated the beauty of her hands and arms. No one in the whole assembly paid such close attention to the orator as did this woman, whom he had never seen before and who appeared to be entirely alone.

When it came to him to speak on another day he saw sitting in the same place the same stately and yet lithe and sinuous figure. This was repeated again and again, until at last whenever he came to a peculiarly fervid burst of oratory he turned to this woman's face and saw it lighted up by the same enthusiasm which was stirring him.

Finally, in the early part of 1870, there came a day when Gambetta surpassed himself in eloquence. His theme was the grandeur of republican government. Never in his life had he spoken so boldly as then, or with such fervor. The ministers of the emperor shrank back in dismay as this big-voiced, strong-limbed man hurled forth sentence after sentence like successive peals of irresistible artillery.

As Gambetta rolled forth his sentences, superb in their rhetoric and all ablaze with that sort of intense feeling which masters an orator in the moment of his triumph, the face of the lady in the gallery responded to him with wonderful appreciation. She was no longer calm, unmoved, and almost severe. She flushed, and her eyes as they met his seemed to sparkle with living fire. When he finished and descended from the rostrum he looked at her, and their eyes cried out as significantly as if the two had spoken to each other.

Then Gambetta did what a person of finer breeding would not have done. He hastily scribbled a note, sealed it, and called to his side one of the official pages. In the presence of the great assemblage, where he was for the moment the center of attention, he pointed to the lady in the gallery and ordered the page to take the note to her.

One may excuse this only on the ground that he was completely carried away by his emotion, so that to him there was no one present save this enigmatically fascinating woman and himself. But the lady on her side was wiser; or perhaps a slight delay gave her time to recover her discretion. When Gambetta's note was brought to her she took it quietly and tore it into little pieces without reading it; and then, rising, she glided through the crowd and disappeared.

Gambetta in his excitement had acted as if she were a mere adventuress. With perfect dignity she had shown him that she was a woman who retained her self-respect.

Immediately upon the heels of this curious incident came the outbreak of the war with Germany. In the war the empire was shattered at Sedan. The republic was proclaimed in Paris. The French capital was besieged by a vast German army. Gambetta was made minister of the interior, and remained for a while in Paris even after it had been blockaded. But his fiery spirit chafed under such conditions. He longed to go forth into the south of France and arouse his countrymen with a cry to arms against the invaders.

Escaping in a balloon, he safely reached the city of Tours; and there he established what was practically a dictatorship. He flung himself with tremendous energy into the task of organizing armies, of equipping them, and of directing their movements for the relief of Paris. He did, in fact, accomplish wonders. He kept the spirit of the nation still alive. Three new armies were launched against the Germans. Gambetta was everywhere and took part in everything that was done. His inexperience in military affairs, coupled with his impatience of advice, led him to make serious mistakes. Nevertheless, one of his armies practically defeated the Germans at Orleans; and could he have had his own way, even the fall of Paris would not have ended the war.

"Never," said Gambetta, "shall I consent to peace so long as France still has two hundred thousand men under arms and more than a thousand cannon to direct against the enemy!"

But he was overruled by other and less fiery statesmen. Peace was made, and Gambetta retired for a moment into private life. If he had not succeeded in expelling the German hosts he had, at any rate, made Bismarck hate him, and he had saved the honor of France.