Lucia (35 page)

The following day Lucia, dressed in mourning, gathered the final draft of her letter of condolences to Prince Eugène—she had stayed up late writing several versions—and drove out with Alvisetto to Queen Hortense’s palace, where Eugène was staying before returning to his wife and children in Bavaria. It was a very emotional leave-taking; both Hortense and Eugène were crushed by the death of their mother. For Lucia, it was also the last formal act of her brief career as lady-in-waiting to a court that had vanished under the ruins of Napoleon’s Empire.

In the darkest hour, just before the final collapse, Napoleon had ordered Eugène to cross the Alps and come to the defence of France. Eugène had resisted the call from his stepfather because his wife was about to give birth again. Furthermore, by remaining in the Kingdom of Italy at the head of a much reduced Armée d’Italie, he had hoped to lay a claim to the kingdom, or at least a portion of it, in any redrawing of the European map. But during the preliminary talks held by the great powers in Paris in April and May 1814 after Napoleon’s demise, it became clear that northern Italy would fall under Austria’s control in one form or another. By the time Eugène hurried back to Paris to assist his dying mother, his kingdom had disintegrated. Mob violence in the streets of Milan culminated on 20 April with the gruesome lynching of Eugène’s unpopular finance minister, Giuseppe Prina. Lucia learnt that Alvise had managed to leave Milan safely and reach Alvisopoli, but she knew little else, and communications remained very fragmented.

During the following weeks Lucia became obsessed with one question: what future lay in store for Venice? At the end of April the Austrians finally lifted the siege but the city was prostrate after six months of isolation, hunger and disease. The death of the Republic seventeen years earlier, Lucia confided to her diary, was still “a thorn in my heart.” There was, she knew, very little chance of resurrecting it. But she felt it was wrong to give up all hope. “Surely this is the time to try,” she told her sister, “what with all the European sovereigns gathered here [in Paris] at once.” If the Bourbon monarchy had been restored—so went her argument—why not imagine that the Republic of their elders might also be? In a moment of enthusiasm, she wrote to her Venetian friends still in Milan begging them to underwrite a petition to the allies “for the rebirth of our Republic.” She reminded them that the Genoese had already taken a similar step. “It will perhaps prove useless, but at least [we] will not have to blame [ourselves] for not having made every possible effort.”
⁴⁶

It was a valiant but doomed endeavour. The allies did not have the slightest interest in reviving the Republic of old. “Everywhere I am told that Venice will be ceded back to Austria,” she observed sadly. Clearly, Emperor Francis was the person she should try to see: she asked for an interview and was received on 24 May. Lucia lobbied hard on behalf of Venice, reminding the emperor that the city had greatly suffered and would need special attention to get back on its feet. Indeed, why not make it an important administrative centre, a regional capital of the Austrian Empire? Why not make it the official residence of a Habsburg archduke? Lucia pressed on, carried away by her own arguments. “But all the Emperor did, after each suggestion I made, was to repeat: ‘Please stay calm, Madam, have no fear.’”
⁴⁷

Shortly after her useless meeting with Emperor Francis, Lucia ran into a Milanese acquaintance who had lost no time in converting to the Habsburg cause. He congratulated her on the happy prospects of Venice under Austrian rule. Lucia replied with indignation that she was a republican. “I will certainly adapt to the new situation,” she wrote in her diary. “But I remain inconsolable.”
⁴⁸
Frustrated at her inability to do something for Venice, she went to the foreign ministry’s archives to see whether she could not at least retrieve stolen documents that had belonged to her family. With the help of a friendly archivist, she found stack upon stack of letters and parchments pertaining to the history of the old Venetian Republic. Rummaging through the mouldy papers, she pulled out her father’s correspondence with the doge when he was ambassador to Constantinople. She asked the complicit archivist if she could take the letters, and hurried home with her prize. Emboldened by this stroke of good luck, she wrote to Talleyrand, now Louis XVIII’s foreign minister, asking for an interview to discuss what steps should be taken to have all the archives taken by Napoleon shipped back to Venice. There was no reply. Talleyrand was busy preparing the Congress of Vienna and had very little time on his hands. “He probably thought I was just another foreigner asking for a favour,”
⁴⁹
Lucia concluded. She made one more attempt. This time, however, she added to her name the old Austrian titles she had never used, not forgetting the Starred Cross of the Habsburg Empire she had received just before leaving Vienna in 1806, and sent in the request, curious to see whether Talleyrand would pay her more attention.

T
he Treaty of Paris was signed at the end of May, formally ending hostilities with France, which was now reduced to its pre-Revolution frontiers. The allied troops withdrew from the capital, and a long line of kings, chancellors, diplomats and generals flowed back to the various European capitals. Emperor Alexander left town in a huff, so peeved was he at the way things had turned out (though not without having made arrangements to purchase Joséphine’s fabulous art collection).

“London, Vienna, Milan: these days everyone seems to be going somewhere,”
⁵⁰
Lucia observed, capturing the end-of-season atmosphere. It was time to begin planning her own departure. There was no longer any point in staying in Paris for Alvisetto’s education after Napoleon’s fall—even Alvise conceded as much. Besides, their son was not exactly shining at school. His teachers worried about his lack of zeal and his indifference to his studies. Lucia, on her part, had lost all patience with him: it was a struggle to get him up in the morning (and she had her own classes to attend!), he was slow with homework and she was always having to go fetch him at the Jardin du Luxembourg, where he stopped to play ball on his way home from riding school. “I don’t know how to educate Alvisetto,” she burst out in frustration to Paolina. “What he needs is a man of knowledge and authority”
⁵¹
—an obvious dig at Alvise, so absent from their lives, but also at Vérand, who had been of such little use around the house and rather a weight on her. “What with all his ailments, cures, convalescences, I hardly ever see him out of bed.” It was, she concluded, “very, very, very necessary”
⁵²
to send Alvisetto off to boarding school once they were back in Italy, possibly somewhere near Venice, like Padua.

Unlike her listless son, Lucia was ever more diligent in the pursuit of her studies at the Jardin des Plantes, as if determined to soak up as much knowledge as possible, no matter how haphazardly, before returning to Italy. When crates arrived from overseas, carrying all manner of reptiles, birds and insects, she was always on hand to help Professor Saint Hilaire sort out hundreds of specimens. He taught her the art of vivisection and how to handle live animals, including snakes—a requirement for the certificate in anatomy she was working towards. She passed her chemistry course with Professor Laugier and her mineralogy course with Professor Havy with flying colours. But botany was the subject she grew passionate about, and Professor Des Fontaines’s course absorbed her more than any other.

Lucia got up before dawn every morning and walked down the still deserted
quais
along the Seine to be at the Jardin des Plantes in time for Des Fontaines’s class at six o’clock. After the lecture, she usually went to collect samples and cuttings on the grounds, carrying a tin tray slung over her shoulder. Jean Thonin, the legendary chief gardener, helped her select the seeds of trees that had recently arrived from North America and which he thought might do well at Alvisopoli: silver maple and red maple, canoe birch, Easter red cedar, American sweet gum and other fast-growing species. Professor Des Fontaines compiled a list of plants and shrubs for Lucia to take to Italy and sent her to Monsieur Noisette, who oversaw the nursery in rue Jacob. She assembled a considerable botanical collection in boxes that were piling up in the entrance at rue de l’Estrapade. Her 200 rose cuttings covered an eclectic variety: she mentions the pinkish Anemone Rose, the tie-dyed Rose Panachée (
Rosa variegata
), one she calls “Rose Bissone” (“with its sweet smell of pineapple and raspberry
gelée
”) and the fashionable
Rosa multiflora,
a prolific shrub with white and pink flowers “that grows like a vine.”
⁵³
It had come from China only two years before and was already very popular among Parisian rose-lovers.

She completed her botany requirements with Monsieur Dupont, the Serviteur des Roses at the Jardin des Plantes. He was a cheerful man who tended to his 457 species of rose with great devotion. In his extraordinary garden, which was just then reaching its fullest profusion, Dupont taught Lucia the art of grafting. His wife, Louise, had died twelve years earlier, and he had buried her heart in a corner of the garden where low ivy now grew, in the shape of a heart. Dupont added in a whisper that he wanted his own heart to be buried next to that of his wife.

L
ucia secretly hoped that once Alvise had taken care of the most urgent tasks on his estates, he would travel to Paris and help her organise the family’s trip back to Italy. She even fantasised that the two might steal a quick trip to London: “It would be wonderful to make a dash,” she confided to her sister. “The opportunity is unique as we are so close and, for once, at peace.”
⁵⁴
But Alvise was too tied up with his affairs, what with the harvest coming up and the perennial threat of summer rains. The accounts were in such disarray that he could not send her money for the journey and instructed her to finance the trip by selling everything she could: furniture, jewellery, clothes, and even his old Senate uniform—if she could find a buyer for it.

It was a tough task. The Russians had left town, and the English tourists who were starting to arrive in Paris were much more careful with their money. She made the rounds of all the jewellers she knew hoping to sell the set of shells she had been trying to get rid of for months. She finally sold it to an Englishman through the concierge of the Hotel de l’Europe for 700 francs. Lucia was quite pleased with herself as that style of jewellery was no longer fashionable and she would never have sold it to a Parisian. She was also able to sell the beds, two chests of drawers and a cupboard. But she had no luck with Alvise’s Senate uniform, not even among Bonaparte die-hards. She instructed Alvisetto to undo the embroidery so she could at least sell the gold thread and the silver buttons; then she had Mademoiselle Neppel, her seamstress, unmake the uniform and she sold the pieces of cloth to the tailor, Monsieur Robert. With the proceeds from the sale she bought ten pairs of gloves, a box of dried figs and one of dried apricots.

In the end, Lucia raised enough cash to purchase two horses for the gig, which Checco would be driving back to Italy with Teresa, and to hire a carriage. The coachman, Signor Maccari, a genial Florentine, was to manage the trip, providing meals and lodgings along the way. There was still a little cash left for one last shopping spree. Socks, shoes, shirts, fabrics, dried foods: Venice had been under siege for six months and Lucia had heard there still was a penury of the most basic goods. She longed to be home. “I can’t wait to sleep in my own room,” she told Paolina, “though I fear there will be many rats as the apartment has been empty for so long. Make sure that proper stops are put into cracks and holes.” As much as she loved Paris, she felt the constant pull of her Venetian roots. “This is a great city but I prefer the one I was born in, and I hope to spend the few years of life I still have surrounded by our beloved lagoons.”
⁵⁵

I
n the midst of last-minute preparations, Lucia received a call from the foreign ministry: though very busy preparing for the Congress of Vienna, Talleyrand was willing to see Lucia for a
petit quart d’heure d’entretien,
the note said—a brief fifteen-minute interview. Two elderly generals were already sitting in the waiting room when she arrived. A few minutes later, they were joined by the Prince de Rohan, a wrinkled gentleman from the oldest house of Brittany, who engaged Lucia in amiable chit-chat—his daughter had apparently been escorted by a Mocenigo in Venice at the time of the Republic—until it was her turn to go in. Talleyrand was polite but distant, and he made it plain he was a very busy man. Right away Lucia asked him how he thought Venice should proceed in its petition to obtain the papers belonging to the Republic, which, she added pointedly, “I know to be in France.”