Lucia (31 page)

The way Alvise sided with the agent and against his own wife really stung me; he should show more respect for me—especially in our own house. He has completely humiliated me. I never would have thought that my own husband would turn out to be my worst enemy…Oh, I get so mad when I am put down like this. If only you knew how angry I have been all day over this matter!
⁴⁸

The atmosphere did not improve during the following months. Alvise led his own life, which revolved around Alvisopoli and the other Mocenigo estates; he made occasional forays into Milan only if the Senate was in session. Lucia was stuck in the paralysing routine at court, where her schedule returned to normal as her health improved. To make matters more unpleasant between them, Alvise instructed the family banker in Milan not to make any disbursements to his wife without his written approval. Lucia had always been very careful with the money entrusted to her. Now she suddenly found herself short of cash for household expenses not covered by her stipend—Alvise was often travelling and was hard to reach at short notice. So Lucia was forced to pawn her silverware and her gold just to get by and to pay her bills. She felt humiliated, of course, but also annoyed by the sheer inefficiency of this method.

Lucia did not understand why Alvise was being so unkind to her. She assumed that her husband was seeing other women during his constant travels in the provinces; new friendships as well as old flames. But there did not seem to be any serious attachment undermining their relationship. She felt her marriage, which had already endured so much, was entering a new, perilous phase—and for no clear reason. More baffling to her was the fact that Alvise was no longer his usual self with their son.

Alvisetto was spending the summer of 1812 on a farm in Annières with Vérand. The boy had not seen his parents in two years, and his letters were becoming more poignant each month. “Oh darling mother,” he wrote from the countryside south of Paris, “have pity on me and give me news about you. I would give everything I have to receive a letter from you now…”
⁴⁹
Lucia did not have the courage to tell him it was going to be another year until they could be reunited, as she had been placed on duty at court for the duration of the winter trimester. Even if her health permitted, she would not be able to make the journey to Paris before April of the following year. Alvise had promised his son a trial period of two years. The two years had passed, yet he showed no sign of wanting to confront the issue, let alone journey to Paris; and he lost his patience for very little.

Alvisetto was assembling a small library and he wrote several times to his father asking him if he could post him a few history books he had in Milan. There was one book in particular he was very keen to have: a classic account of the travels of Niccolò and Antonio Zen, two Venetian navigators who had explored the North Atlantic in the fourteenth century. Alvise complained to a bewildered Lucia:

[Our son] is so insistent. He’s asked me a thousand times about these books, and a thousand times I’ve told him that the cost of sending them would be greater than their value. I’m determined not to let him have them. For the following reasons: 1) to punish him for his insistence, 2) to force him to be more compliant, 3) and to be more obedient, 4) and to be more tolerant, 5) I spend all I spend and still it’s not enough?
⁵⁰

Alvise no longer spoke to his mother, Chiara. Their relationship had deteriorated over the ownership of some properties, and though a financial settlement was reached after a long and hurtful litigation, a reconciliation did not follow. Lucia regretted this state of affairs. She was no longer close to Chiara, as she had been as a young daughter-in-law, but she had remained in touch with her throughout the dispute between mother and son. She had also encouraged Alvisetto to keep up a correspondence with his grandmother. When Alvise learnt what was going on behind his back, he became enraged:

Alvisetto is still of an age in which he is not allowed to send letters that are not read by his parents. I must remind you that [the boy is Chiara’s] grandson because he is my son. This means I stand between him and her. However much she hates me and tries to harm me, I shall always respect and love my mother because that is an immoveable law of nature. But [Alvisetto] is not her son. He is bound to me, and he must not try to get on with someone who is so obviously and so powerfully my enemy.
⁵¹

What was gnawing at Alvise? His conflict with his mother surely cast a shadow over his life, making him short-tempered and intolerant with the people he was closest to. He was also under extreme pressure to find money to pay the huge taxes the Napoleonic government was levying on property to finance its military expenditures. Increasingly, Alvise was forced to use the profits from his other estates to sustain his very expensive projects at Alvisopoli. Nor did it cheer him to see more and more farm hands—boys he had seen grow into strong young men and who thought of themselves as
alvisopolitani
above all else—recruited by the army and dragged off to some faraway battlefield on the eastern front. By 1812, Alvise was losing his early enthusiasm for Napoleon’s Kingdom of Italy. His mood may well have been coloured by an increasing pessimism about the future.

A
t the end of the summer, Prince Eugène left Italy at the head of his Armée d’Italie to join forces with Napoleon, who was on his way to Moscow. Joséphine arrived in Milan and settled in Villa Bonaparte to be with her three grandchildren and to assist Princess Augusta in the birth of her fourth child. (Napoleon had personally approved the journey to Milan in an affectionate letter he wrote to Joséphine from a village in Eastern Prussia, adding that Eugène was already with him and managing fine.)

Lucia was still in Vicenza, completing a cycle of Paletta’s cure, but she returned to Milan to pay her court to Joséphine shortly after Princess Augusta’s successful delivery. The two had a lot of catching up to do. Joséphine told her about her quiet life at Malmaison, surrounded by her rare animals and her exotic plants. She saw little of the emperor, she said, but he occasionally made a surprise visit when he was in Paris. He was always kind to her and to her children, whom he loved as his own, and he wrote to her regularly. Joséphine asked after Lucia’s health, for Prince Eugène and Princess Augusta had informed her that she had not been well. Lucia told her about her medicine man and the mineral waters of Recoaro, adding that in truth the greatest cause of her suffering was being so far away from Alvisetto—she had even drawn up a secret plan to meet him halfway, in Lyon…Joséphine was a sympathetic listener, and in a moment of intimacy, Lucia mentioned the difficulties she was having with Alvise. There were times, she said, in which the tension was so high she thought she would not be able to stand it any more.

The latest incident had occurred over dinner the night before—Alvise was in town for a Senate session. Lucia’s stomach pains had given her a little trouble during the day so she had asked for some broth and a slice of bread. As she waited for the food to be served at the table, she began adding up a few figures on a piece of paper—small sums she owed—while Alvise started his usual litany against his mother. When he saw Lucia was not giving him her full attention, he blew his top. “I realise now that it was a mistake to appear so thoughtless [when he was talking about his mother],” Lucia conceded, “but my momentary distraction caused him to utter such awful words against me that I burst into tears. I continued to cry in silence for the rest of the meal…”
⁵²

B
y early winter, the news from Russia had become disheartening. “In just a few days, more than 30,000 horses perished from the cold,” Lucia reported to her sister in Venice, relaying whatever information she could pick up at court.

All our cavalry is now reduced to marching in the snow. There are no more mules to transport our artillery, and most pieces had to be abandoned or destroyed…Our men, whom nature has not made strong enough to face the challenges [of the Russian campaign], are struggling on, exhausted and utterly disheartened.
⁵³

Napoleon’s army suffered a devastating rout. The Italian contingent—27,000 men—was wiped out. Only a handful of officers and soldiers made it back home. Often Lucia’s reports were little more than lists of the dead and the missing: “Lauretta Mocenigo’s son died with a bullet in his chest…The young Widman boy is dead…The Giustinians have lost their child and are so crushed with grief they will not leave the house…Alemagna’s son has returned disfigured after losing his nose to frostbite…”
⁵⁴

It was the gloomiest winter in a long time. Lucia could not wait to leave Milan at the first signs of spring and join her son in Paris. Her health was on the mend. “My stomach has definitely recovered,” she assured Paolina in early March. “I am feeling well.” A few weeks later she announced that her “u-t-e-r-u-s is in good shape, exactly where it is meant to be.”
⁵⁵
There was nothing holding her back any more. She completed her duties at court at the end of March, and left for Paris in April with the intention of spending several months with Alvisetto, who was now thirteen—a young adolescent. She chose the road of the Simplon Pass because it was the quickest way to reach Paris, only to find the pass was still snowbound. The passage on sleds was hazardous and would have taken much too long. She turned around, and headed for the safer route of Mont Cenis, by way of Turin. “Obstacles always appear when you least expect them,” Lucia scribbled to her sister as she hurried along. Tucked among her clothes in one of the trunks was the travel book about the two Venetian navigators that Alvise had refused to send to his son. “I shall read it during the journey so I can give it to Alvisetto when I see him.”
⁵⁶

Chapter Nine

A YEAR IN PARIS

L
ucia thought Alvisetto had grown “prodigiously” since she had last seen him. When he rushed to embrace her, clutching a bouquet of fresh flowers in one hand and a small portrait of Napoleon in the other (it was originally intended for Alvise), she was shocked to see that he was quite a bit taller than her. At close range, she also noticed the jumble of new teeth that crowded his mouth and had slightly altered his facial expression. After more hugging and kissing before a fretful Vérand and an over-excited Teresa, Lucia dragged Alvisetto off to the nearby church of Saint Sulpice for a prayer of thanksgiving; then the two went off, hand in hand, to the Tuileries Gardens.

On closer inspection, she realised her son had twice as many canines as he should, and they were growing one on top of the other. “One only notices when he opens his mouth or laughs,” she later assured Paolina. Still, the extra teeth were going to have to be pulled out. “I feel for the poor boy, and of course I worry the irons will damage the enamel on his other teeth.”
¹
The light dimmed on the way back home, and Lucia also noticed her son’s vision was not very good. He was probably a little short-sighted, she guessed. He would have to have his eyes checked for glasses.

A
lvisetto and Vérand no longer lodged with the Humberts. In view of Lucia’s arrival, they had moved to an apartment in a
petit hotel
on a quiet street in Faubourg Saint Germain. The house belonged to Monsieur Minier, an etcher of some repute who lived on the ground and first floors with his wife. The Mocenigos were on the second and third floors. It was not a large apartment by any means. The antechamber was used as a dining room. On the southern side, a small living room overlooked the pretty garden tended by Madame Minier. Opposite to the living room, separated by a narrow corridor, was Lucia’s bedroom, which had a rather glamorous view of Jacques-Louis David’s house-studio (she occasionally glimpsed the great artist as he got in or out of his carriage). A staircase led to Alvisetto’s bedroom on the upper floor, next to which was Vérand’s room. Teresa, who had come to Paris with Lucia, slept in the maid’s room on the same floor. Despite the size, Lucia found the apartment to be adequate. One problem bothered her, however: the lack of shutters at her bedroom windows. Also, the gratings could not be secured, and banged when the wind picked up in the evening. She resolved the matter by sleeping in the living room, where it was quieter.

Once the joy of their reunion had worn off, Lucia focused on Alvisetto’s manners. She did not like what she saw. “He doesn’t hold himself well at the table,” she complained to her sister. “He tends to slouch or lean his head on his open hand. And he eats much too quickly.”
²
She was disappointed by Vérand, who seemed entirely self-absorbed and fretted about mysterious ailments during much of the day. Alvisetto had lost respect for his old tutor, and teased him no end. Vérand, on his part, made no effort to engage the boy in conversation or stimulate his mind in any way. They had grown into an odd couple, and Lucia wondered what their daily
tête à têtes
could possibly have been like during all the time they had lived together.

One evening—Lucia happened to be out on a visit—Alvisetto came to the table with the penknife he used to sharpen his pencils, and left it open, beside his plate. At some point during dinner, Vérand asked him to pass him a lemon, and Alvisetto, rather rudely, told him to get it himself. Vérand lost patience and leaned over brusquely to grab the lemon. Fearing Vérand was about to strike him, Alvisetto jerked to the side. In the general confusion, the penknife found its way down Vérand’s sleeve. Within a matter of seconds, blood gushed out from his arm, his shirt turned crimson and a large stain spread on the tablecloth. Luckily the local surgeon was able to rush over and stop the haemorrhaging. Still, Vérand’s arm was a dreadful mess of yellows and blues. The next day Lucia called Professor Dubois, the Imperial Surgeon, to make sure a main artery had not been seriously punctured. “It cost me a gold
louis
but at least it has taken away the awful anxiety.” Vérand took to his room to nurse his blemished limb and did not come out for days. “You can imagine how Alvisetto was frightened by the whole incident,” she wrote to Paolina, ever the protective mother.
³

L
ucia was unhappy with the way Vérand had arranged Alvisetto’s schedule. Her son had to get up at five o’clock in the morning in order to study for two hours with one of his teachers before going off to school. In the afternoon, he crossed the Jardin du Luxembourg to attend riding class at the Manège Impérial. He was home by dinnertime, and then hung sleepily over his homework until ten or eleven o’clock. Lucia was not surprised to learn that his grades were poor: he was probably dozing off during most of his classes. She cancelled his early-morning tutorials at home so he could sleep an hour later and still have time for morning mass. She had to drag him to church: “My son is not very devout,” Lucia admitted to her sister, “and doesn’t appreciate long services at all.” He was always tugging at her sleeve, and whispering “Let’s go, let’s go.”
⁴

During her first weeks in Paris, Lucia called on few people, mostly friends from Milan who worked for the government in one capacity or another. She did not feel at all compelled to make her way into society; she certainly did not have a leather notebook in which to annotate the names and addresses of the families she called on, as she had had in Vienna back in 1801. “The purpose of my visit here is to be with my son,” she told Paolina. “Thus I spend most of my time at home.”
⁵
That was true only in part. Lucia had no intention of living as a recluse in Paris. She had plenty of time to explore the city when Alvisetto was at school. She loved walking through the Jardin du Luxemburg, where the roses were in full bloom. And she would use any excuse to cross the Tuileries Gardens and spend a couple of hours in the busy shops of the Passage Feydau or the Passage Panorama. After a session with her hairdresser, Monsieur Guillaume, she often stopped for a lemonade at the Café de la Foi or an ice cream at Tortoni’s, and if the sun was out she sometimes prolonged her little excursion by having lunch at Martin Restaurateur, a popular restaurant near the Palais Royal. “For only two francs,” she boasted, “I can have a soup, an entrée, a roast of some kind and vegetables and dessert.”
⁶
She never neglected her daily devotions, usually going to mass at the local parish, Saint Jacques, or to Saint Sulpice, the most beautiful church in Faubourg Saint Germain, where she sometimes saw the formidable Madame de Genlis absorbed in prayer. The first time Lucia glimpsed her at her pew, she was dressed in black and wore a little straw hat, also black, and a red scarf over her shoulders. “I had been told she was tall, as tall as Madame Dupont; she may have been, but now she stands with a stoop and is very thin.”
⁷
If Lucia was away from her neighbourhood at the time of prayer, she walked into the first church she encountered. She stopped by at weddings and funerals, mixing with strangers just to observe the faces around her; later she would jot down a description of the trembling young bride of a rich
parfumier
or the eighty grieving relatives of a wool merchant.

Lucia kept a diary in Paris which she filled with brief, factual entries. She described herself wandering around the tombstones at the Père Lachaise cemetery, or looking at the pictures at the Louvre, where she once worked herself into a fit of indignation at the sight of a painting of Palazzo Mocenigo which had once hung in the Chiesa della Carità in Venice. If Alvisetto had a free afternoon, she sometimes took him to the carousel at Place Vendôme or else to play ball under the great chestnuts in the Jardin du Luxembourg.

Although Lucia was on leave from her position as lady-in-waiting to Princess Augusta, she was nevertheless expected to pay her court to Empress Marie Louise at Saint Cloud—a duty she fulfilled with no enthusiasm, dropping by when she had nothing better to do, and possibly at a time when she knew the empress would not be receiving and she could simply leave a card. It did not always work, though, and several times she got stuck having to watch the king of Rome, Napoleon and Marie Louise’s two-year-old son, play in his imperial pen or make a mess of his dinner. Even less appealing than the visits to Saint Cloud were those to Madame Mère, Napoleon’s temperamental mother. Fortunately, a liveried servant usually ushered Lucia away saying the old lady was busy—
“Madame est en affaires.”
⁸
In contrast, Lucia was always glad to visit Empress Joséphine (Napoleon had allowed her to retain the title). She drove over to Malmaison a week after arriving in Paris, and took Alvisetto with her—Joséphine had heard so much about him she had told Lucia to bring him along so that he might play with her grandchildren (her daughter, Queen Hortense of Holland, was trapped in a miserable marriage with Napoleon’s younger brother, Louis, and often came to seek comfort at Malmaison). The empress received Lucia, Alvisetto and the trailing Vérand in the billiard room. A small parrot with the most colourful plumage was perched on her breast. The greetings had to be interrupted when the bird started to peck the flowers of a little bouquet fixed on Joséphine’s head, forcing her to remove three strings of pearls from her neck lest the parrot take aim at them next. Despite the confusion, Lucia did not overlook the exceptional quality of the pearls, estimating they were possibly worth 100,000 francs.

Lemon ices and biscuits were served in the garden-room, where other visitors were assembled. There were several relatives from the island of Martinique, and Madame d’Ahremberg, one of the empress’s faithful ladies-in-waiting. The large room gave out on to a terraced lawn with bushes of creamy-coloured roses bursting all around it. Beyond the formal garden and the greenhouses, fields of young wheat swayed in the afternoon breeze. One of the charms of Malmaison was the way it combined the intimacy of a garden, the grandeur of an English park and the rusticity of a working farm. Joséphine took Lucia to see the rhododendrons she had planted along the main alley and the elaborate new waterworks. Back at the house, they visited the refurbished apartment upstairs. “The bedroom is magnificent,” Lucia wrote:

The tapestry is a crimson velvet decorated with the most beautiful gold embroidery. The bed-cover is made of a delicate Indian muslin, also embroidered with gold filaments. The dressing table is in gold and vermilion. It’s worth at least 200,000 francs.
⁹

Lucia had an open invitation to visit Joséphine, and the following months, Malmaison became a second home to her in Paris. She went once or twice a week, sometimes for lunch, sometimes for afternoon tea and a walk in the park, sometimes for dinner and a few hands of Boston. The company was always an interesting mix of Joséphine’s older friends from the periods of the Revolution and the Directoire and members of the new imperial aristocracy who had remained loyal to her even after the divorce from Napoleon. The atmosphere was relaxed, the entertainment very simple: billiards, cards, parlour games. It was not an especially brilliant society, nor did it have the presumption to be so. Still, Joséphine’s good taste, her languorous elegance, gave Malmaison a stylishness that was entirely absent from the pompous court at Saint Cloud.

It was mostly through her Malmaison connections that Lucia’s social life in Paris picked up and gained a sense of direction. In any other European city, being a single woman and a foreigner would probably not have worked to her advantage; but it did in Paris. Her company was sought after, and she began to move with ease in circles that were fairly typical of the twilight years of the Empire, where politicians and old soldiers mixed with the literary set in an atmosphere of general disenchantment.

General Baraguey d’Hilliers, whom she had not seen since their meeting in Vienna in the aftermath of Napoleon’s triumph at Austerlitz, and his wife,
la Générale,
welcomed her in their house as a long-lost friend. Retired General Sérurier invited her to his country estate outside Paris. “He’s a very good person, very hospitable,” she wrote to Paolina about the man who had handed Venice over to the Austrians on that cold and drizzly morning in January of 1798. “He recently bought a farm and lives there with his wife and brother.”
¹⁰
At a small dinner given by Jean-Jacques Cambacérès, the former second consul, Lucia received the attentions of none other than Joseph Fouché, the ruthless minister of the interior.

Soon Lucia found her way into the literary salon of her long-time heroine, Madame de Genlis. There she met René de Chateaubriand, the great Romantic author. She was surprised by his “odd appearance”—the big head covered with black curls so out of proportion with the small, wiry body. He appeared very concentrated all the time, and Lucia was quite intimidated by “the intense look in his eyes.”
¹¹
But she did manage to hold his attention by telling him
The Genius of Christianity
had been the vicereine’s favourite reading during
Petit cercle
in Milan. Another frequent star guest was the geographer Alexander von Humboldt, who enthralled Lucia with his fascinating tales of exploration in South America.