She rushed back to the Rue Laffitte. She spent half an hour in agony of mind, when the sound of a carriage stopping fell upon her ears. She flew into the street, and opened the carriage door. A heavy body lurched against her bosom. It was her dead lover.
It was not in fair fight that Dujarier had fallen. Before even he had been carried to his grave, with Balzac, Méry, Dumas, and De Girardin as his pall-bearers, the suspicions of all his friends had been aroused. At Dr. Vérons, the morning of his death, Bertrand showed Dumas his finger-tip still blackened by the barrel of De Beauvallon's pistol. Would a pistol which had not been charged with ball leave such a stain? Experts present said no. The suspicion that De Beauvallon had made doubly sure of killing his adversary by trying his weapon beforehand ripened in the minds of many into conviction. How, too, had the Creole spent the early part of the morning? Why did he not come with his seconds to the Rue Pinon. What was he doing while Dujarier was awaiting him in the Bois? The affair began to wear a very sinister complexion. Representations were made to the police. Enquiries were set on foot, and De Beauvallon and D'Ecquevillez promptly retired across the Spanish frontier.
Lola had sustained a staggering blow. She was sincerely attached to Dujarier, who had been more to her than any other man had been. The memory of her husband was hateful. Liszt had flashed suddenly across her path, to disappear a few weeks later. Besides, he had given her up of his own accord. But this man had shared her life for months, had loved her to the last, had cared for her both as a lover and a husband. In his will he left her eighteen shares in the Palais Royal Theatre, representing twenty thousand francs. She referred, years after, and no doubt sincerely, to his death as a loss that could never be made up to her.
The luxury of grief is allowed in scant measure to those who minister to the public's amusement. They must dry their tears quickly. Three weeks after the fatal duel, Lola made her appearance at the Porte-St.-Martin Theatre, in _La Biche au Bois_. The audience was no less critical than at the Opera. She was hissed, and with her usual audacity, she exasperated the public still more by expressing her contempt for them upon the stage. So ended her career as a _danseuse_ in the French capital.