In the midst of Lassen's success there came to Budapest, ever famous for its beautiful and winsome women, a certain Mena Ndzki, the daughter of a morganatic marriage between Prince Louis Ndzki of Hungary and a young gypsy singer and dancer, whose grace, beauty and varied accomplishments made her admirers willing to die for her and to kill each other.

This marriage, although irregular, was legal, and the child took her father's name. It should be said to the credit of the Hungarian prince that he never took another wife. At the time of his marriage to the beautiful gypsy songstress the prince was rich, but he was an intense patriot and chafed under the forced Austrian alliance. He was finally detected in a conspiracy to overthrow Austria and free his country. He estates were confiscated, and he died in a dungeon after praying in vain for years to be tried.

Adolph Lassen knew and became the friend of the prince in the prosperous days, and he was not the man to forsake the Hungarian when disaster came. He visited him in prison and promised to care for his wife and daughter after he was gone. The gypsy wife did not long survive her husband. Lassen had never seen the mother or daughter, and was about to make inquiries for the latter, when Budapest glowed with the announcement of a new lyric star of extreme youth and unsurpassed beauty.

After some inquiries and before he had seen her Adolph Lassen, now a rich bachelor of 38, satisfied himself that the new star, over whom not only the patriotic Hungarians, but the Austrians of Budapest, were raving, was the daughter of the robbed and murdered friend, Prince Louis Ndzki. He heard the girl sing, then sought an interview, and from that day on the descendant of the vikings became as ardent as if all his blood came from the tropic sources.

Mena Ndzki knew of him well and favorably. She was 20 years younger than Lassen, but the tall, blond giant won her, and she loved him with all the fervor of her ardent nature. The two were married, and to the great disgust of the gilded youth of Budapest Mena Ndzki left the stage.

Mme. Lassen hated Austria with an undying hate, and she soon succeeded in bringing her husband to feel as she did. He already believed in the Hungarian cause.

Three years after their marriage, which was in 1840, a daughter was born, and with his dead mother and his Norwegian home ever in mind Adolph Lassen named the child Walborg Ndzki.

Lassen met Kossuth and his associates and pledged with them his life and fortune to the liberation of Hungary. At length quiet plotting became open revolt and Lassen, who had been a soldier in his youth, moved his family within the patriot lines and became head of the engineer corps. He was declared an outlaw and his property in and about Budapest was confiscated by the Austrian authorities.

Colonel Lassen did not live to witness the overthrow of the Hungarians and the tightening of the chains. He was killed in one of the battles that destroyed the power of Kossuth and withered the hopes of the patriots.

When the end came, Mme. Lassen and her little daughter were practically friendless and actually penniless, and she would have suffered had not her mother's kinsmen, the gypsies, come to her assistance. She was still young, beautiful and gifted, and it was decided that she should return to the stage, resuming the name Ndzki for purely business reasons.

Mme. Ndzki re-entered the profession in the city where she had left off, and if her reception was not so ardent as on her first appearance it brought the one thing for which she was now striving -- money.

While the mother was winning hearts and ducats in the principal cities of Europe Walborg, the one object of all her efforts, was kept at the best schools. She grew up to be a marvel of beauty.

When Walborg Ndzki was 18, her mother died suddenly in Vienna, leaving her a fortune of nearly $200,000. The girl was wonderfully gifted in the languages and arts, but she knew but little of the great world.

Through all her life the nomad spirit of the gypsy in her nature was ever demanding change, and the inherited love for the stage amounted to a passion.

Some time after her mother's death Walborg Ndzki visited the opera house in Vienna with some school friends. It was the first time she had been inside a theater, for her mother had been careful to keep her away. The garish splendor of the place, the brilliant uniforms of the many officers present and the rich dresses of the women charmed her, but when the curtain rose, and the stage was fitted with graceful figures, and the dome throbbed with music, the emotional girl was fascinated.

That night Walborg Ndzki left the opera house madly in love with the Italian tenor, La Fluera, and in some inexplicable way his eyes met hers in the audience, and he sought her out the next day. The end of this was a marriage before the end of the week. Under her mother's will Walborg was to have control of one-half the money when she was 18 and the rest at the age of 21. Under the Austrian law the husband came into possession of the wife's estate, but so trusting and ignorant was Walborg that she would have discounted the future for her husband if she could.

Mean and mercenary La Fluera soon saw other sources of profit in his beautiful wife. Her person was perfect, and with a little stage training her voice could be made a diamond mine. The young wife, although her husband's treatment soon became cold and cruel, entered with such energy and enthusiasm on her studies that within a year she achieved a grand success in opera at La Scala in Milan.

Afterward they went to Rome, where a young nobleman, an attache of the Austrian legation, became so attentive to the fair singer as to attract the attention of an indifferent public and to rouse the jealousy of La Fluera, whom Walborg had come to hate.

It is said a duel was fought down the Tiber, but be that as it may La Fluera was found there dead and with a purple spot above his heart. Soon after this the young Austrian, Graf von Lederer, was recalled to Vienna, whither Walborg Ndzki -- this was her nom de theatre -- followed.

Two months afterward the count and Walborg were married and the best society of the Austrian capital professed to be very much shocked at the young man's recklessness and the audacity of what they called ''the young adventuress."

That the count loved his wife is pretty certain, but there is not a doubt as to his weakness. After six months he permitted his friends to secure a divorce for him. He was never married again, and was killed a few years after at the battle of Sadowa.

But a still greater change was about to come to the life of Walborg Ndzki. It seems that when she was singing at Milan the Grand Duchess Charlotte, wife of Maximillan, brother of the Austrian emperor, heard her and became charmed with her grace and beauty. And now the attention of the grand duchess was called to her again by her divorce from Graf von Lederer.

Taking advantage of the civil war in the United Status, the French emperor had invaded Mexico and had offered Maximillan the throne of the Montezumas. Urged on by his brilliant and ambitious wife, Maximillan consented to become emperor of Mexico, and at once a court was organized in Vienna and began its dress rehearsals.

The embryo empress sought out Walborg Ndzki and offered her a place in her suit, and, disgusted with the old world and eager for change, the young woman gladly accepted the royal offer. Like one to the manner born Walborg fell into the ways of royalty, and there was good reason for it. Had she not the blood of Hungarian princes and gypsy queens, not to mention the brave currents of the vikings, in her veins?

Long before the royal party reached the City of Mexico Major Gerard, who represented Napoleon III on Maximillan's staff and who had a wife in France, fell desperately in love with the beautiful attendant to the empress. Such occurrences are not unusual in such society. It is very certain, though, that Walborg did not encourage Major Gerard. The French secretary of the emperor, Captain Maurel, had already interested her affections.

A duel arising from this was arranged between the two French admirers of Walborg Ndzki, but before it could be fought the major was killed in a fight with Guarez at Puebla. A month after the coronation of Maximillan Captain Maurel and Walborg were married, the emperor and empress being present.

In 1865 a young Mexican colonel named Manuel Navarro, who was a native of Guatemala, but had pledged his fortune and sword to for the freedom of Mexico, was wounded and captured under conditions that led to his being tried and condemned to death as a spy. Navarro, strikingly brave and handsome, won the sympathy of Walborg, who was a republican at heart. She succeeded in bribing the guard, and the result was the escape of the young colonel to his friends. Muriel was suspected of aiding in the escape. His wife told the truth, but this was taken as an evidence of wifely fidelity. He was sent back to France in disgrace, where he died shortly after.

Late in 1866 Walborg Ndzki, who had been to visit her royal mistress, then stopping at Queretaro, was returning in a carriage to the capital, was captured by a band of Mexican horsemen and carried as a hostage to the camp of the patriot general, Porforio Diaz, in Tamaulipas. She was kindly cared for and sent to Chihuahua, where the sisters gave her a home and she soon won all hearts. As no effort was made to release her, she taught school till May, 1867, when the emperor was captured and shot.

Left to herself, she accepted the offer of marriage made her by a rich Mexicanized American named Head, or Cabesa. Death ended this alliance in six months. Walborg now decided to return to the land of her birth, and with this purpose in mind she made her way back to Mexico, where the republic had succeeded the empire. She there met young Navarro, whose life she had saved. As a result of this meeting Walborg Ndzki went to Guatemala as the wife of Colonel Navarro.

For ten years her life was happy and a son and daughter were born to her. In 1878 her husband, then a governor of one of the provinces, was assassinated by revolutionists. Walborg Ndzki gathered what money she could and with her children went to Budapest, where she was living honored and much beloved in 1893.

By Alfred R. Calhoun. Adopted from The Steubenville Standard, 4, Dec 1896. The interesting thing about this story is that there is no record of any Mme Ndzki, or even prince Louis Ndzki, in Hungarian history. Still, it is a nice story that embodies the stereotypes held in America at the end of the 19th century about Hungary and the Hungarians.