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family which had reverted to the crown, along with all the estate’s revenues. In 1752 he raised her to the rank of duchess. This new position gave her not only the taboret but in some obfuscation of royal etiquette allowed her to sit on an armchair like a princess with the royal family during public dinners. Her coach, bearing ducal arms, was now permitted to enter the innermost courtyards of the various royal palaces. Lesser mortals were required to get out of their coaches at the outer courtyards, hold up their skirts, and walk around piles of horse manure. But Madame de Pompadour, while enjoying the privileges of her new title, never used it, still proclaiming herself the marquise de Pompadour, out of respect for the queen.
    Sometimes kings favored their foreign-born mistresses with titles to help them better fit into their adopted country. George I turned his stiffly Teutonic mistress Ermengarda Melusina von Schulenberg into the smoothly English duchess of Suffolk. Similarly, George II’s Hanoverian mistress Amelia von Walmoden became the countess of Yarmouth. Charles II honored French-born Louise de Kéroualle by presenting her with a bouquet of fragrant English titles—Baroness Petersfield, countess of Farnham, and duchess of Portsmouth.
    Perhaps Lola Montez cast her glance backward into history and decided that as a royal mistress she, too, should be ennobled. If so, she did not recognize that she lived in a different time, a time when the king’s word was not law. The timid mewling of most seventeenth-and eighteenth-century political opposition had swelled into a roar with the French Revolution andwould never again be muted. Nevertheless, Lola demanded that Ludwig give her the title of a Bavarian countess, something which she hoped would provide her with an air of respectability, or at least officially elevate her position above that of her angry detractors.
    Ludwig succeeded only with great difficulty in pushing Lola’s Bavarian citizenship and ennoblement as countess of Landsfeld through his ministry. His entire council resigned in protest. But Lola was now permitted to drive a carriage with the nine-pointed crown of a Bavarian countess, and she gave herself more imperious airs than ever. To her chagrin, the new countess was still not received by Bavarian high society, as Queen Therese made known that she would not receive anyone who received Lola.
    For two years after her exile from Bavaria Lola traveled about Europe, where her title was ridiculed by true blue bloods. Curiously, her title did her more good in the United States, where she lived in the 1850s. Unlike the ossified European nobility, Americans were thrilled to meet a real Bavarian countess and didn’t care how she had come by the title.
Gambling Debts
    In past centuries gambling debts routinely made up a significant part of the cost of living. Those in the upper echelons of society were expected to play cards and dice and wager large sums on the outcome. Those who refused were considered boring or, even worse, poor. Needless to say, many of the players suffered extraordinary losses, which as a matter of honor had to be paid promptly. One of the most satisfying perquisites of a royal mistress was the certainty that the king would pay her gambling debts.
    Throughout her decade-long reign at court—and a decade beyond that—Charles II would pay what in today’s money would be millions of dollars in gambling debts for Lady Castlemaine. She would lose—and sometimes win—startling amounts, wagering princely sums without blinking an eye. In 1679, Lady Castlemainereturned to England from a long stay in France. One courtier reported that upon hearing this, “His Majesty gave the Commissioners of the Treasury fair warning to look to themselves, for that she would have a bout with them for money, having lately lost 20,000 pounds in money and jewels in one night at play.” 11
    Lady Castlemaine’s