Well, it was no wonder I was put out then. Now, after so many years, it doesn’t seem to matter much. I have that letter still; it is old and worn and yellow—like me. She never became like that; she died as lovely as she had always been, far away in America—having lived before she died. I suppose I’m maudlin, but I don’t think particularly hard of her now—she was in the game for the same things as the rest of us—she got more of them, that’s all. I’d rather think of her as the finest romp that ever pressed a pillow—the most beautiful I ever knew, anyway. And I still wear my whiskers. One doesn’t forget Lola Montez, ever. Conniving bitch.

Of course, when you’re old and fairly well pickled in drink you can forgive most things past, and reserve your spite for the neighbours who keep you awake at night and children who get under your feet. In youth it’s different, and my fury that morning was frightful. I rampaged about that room, and hurled the furniture about, and when the landlord came to protest I knocked him down and kicked him. There was a tremendous outcry then, the constable was summoned, and it was a damned near thing that I wasn’t hauled before a magistrate and jailed.

In the end, there was nothing for it but to pack up what little I had and make back for Munich. I had a little cash now, thanks to Lola—God, that was the crowning insult—so that at long last I was able to make for home, weary and angry and full of venom. I left Germany poorer than I came in—although of course there was still £250 of Lola’s (or Bismarck’s) money in the bank at home. I had two sabre cuts and a gash on my arm, a decent grasp of the German language, and several white hairs, I imagine, after what I’d been through. Oh, that was another thing, of course—I had a scalp that looked like a hog’s back for bristles, although it grew right in time. And to make my temper even worse, by the time I reached the Channel I heard news that Lola was in Switzerland, fornicating with Viscount Peel, the old prime minister’s son—no doubt he was well peeled, too, by the time she had finished with him.