Chapter Eight

LADY-IN-WAITING

Novara, the capital of Agogna, was a quiet, unpretentious city five hours from Milan by coach, on the way to Piedmont. Alvise set up offices in the newly established Prefecture on the square, and leased the main floor of an elegant palazzo owned by Countess Bellini, the local grande dame,where he was joined by Lucia and Alvisetto, Monsieur Vérand and the staff (Margherita, Teresa, Felicita and Checco). The district of Agogna was not among the larger or more important ones in the kingdom; Alvise was nonetheless satisfied because he was one of only a handful of Venetians called to serve in Napoleon’s government. He threw himself into work, staying at his office late when he was not travelling to the towns and villages under his jurisdiction.

“We have been well received,” Lucia wrote to Paolina soon after settling in. “Everyone here seems pleased with Alvise’s ability and fairness.” It was her own role she was a little uncertain about.

Initially, I thought we might open our house once a week. [Countess Bellini] assured me she would be the first to come if we decided to receive society. Then I heard the people here don’t generally fancy social gatherings so I told the Countess we were not yet ready. Now we tend to spend our evenings at home alone.¹

What a contrast to life in the Kingdom’s capital! Prince Eugène and his young wife, Princess Augusta-Amelia of Bavaria, established a highly structured court at the royal palace in Milan, with rigid rules of etiquette borrowed from the Imperial Court in Paris. There were also suppers and balls in grand Milanese houses. “I hear these soirées can be quite glittering. The Viceroy usually makes an appearance and dances too; not the Vicereine, who has given up these amusements on account of her advanced pregnancy.”²

There was not much regret in Lucia’s comments. Having just completed two exhausting, back-to-back moves, from Vienna to Alvisopoli and from Alvisopoli to Novara, she was content to lead a quiet life with her family now that circumstances had brought them all under the same roof again. Although she and Alvise had been married for twenty years, Lucia had spent many more days alone than in the company of her husband—indeed there were moments when she felt their life together had never really begun. And she did not look forward to the time when she would be summoned to the court in Milan to take on her duties as lady-in-waiting to Princess Augusta—a prestigious assignment Alvise had sought for his wife to strengthen their ties to the ruling family.

Monsieur Vérand was put in charge of Alvisetto’s education, the job for which he had originally been hired in Vienna. He wasted little time in expressing his displeasure at how much the boy had fallen behind in Latin and arithmetic, how easily he was distracted, and just how plain lazy he could be. Vérand started to keep a daily record of his pupil’s performance and general behaviour in a green and blue booklet known as “Alvisetto’s Journal.” Once a week, a tremulous Alvisetto took it to his parents so that they might judge his conduct, and discuss it with him. From the start, Vérand was quite harsh in his judgement, filling his reports with epithets like “disobedient,” “stubborn,” “ill-mannered,” “restless” and “capricious.” He noted sternly that the boy “laughs out loud without a reason, just like a child.”³

The parents encouraged Vérand’s method because, as Lucia said, “loud reprimands and threats of awful punishments have produced no effects.” Alvisetto showed occasional signs of intelligence, she added, “but his mind is always elsewhere and it sometimes takes him three hours to do work that should take him no more than fifteen minutes. It is astonishing how he can seem an absolute prodigy at times, then days and days will go by without the slightest progress.”⁴

Alvisetto’s uneven results made Lucia anxious. She knew Alvise wanted to send their son off to boarding school at the earliest opportunity, possibly to Paris, in order to acquire a proper French education. The prospect of a separation filled her with dread. The only way to delay Alvisetto’s departure, she felt, was to convince Alvise that the child was making progress in his studies. She put her faith in Vérand, conscious of the trust her husband had in him, and the two entered a silent pact to work Alvisetto hard in order to keep him at home as long as possible.

In Vienna, Lucia had grown accustomed to spending a good deal of time with her son, going over his lessons when she was not actually doing some teaching herself. She did not want to give up that part of their relationship entirely. Having relinquished prime responsibility for Alvisetto’s general education to Vérand, she nevertheless remained in charge of his religious studies, to make sure, she told her sister, that he received a solid Christian upbringing. Lucia ordered The Life of Jesus from a bookshop in Milan, and she and Alvisetto curled up together in bed every evening to read three chapters of the big volume. “I’m finding this book very useful. I had never read the life of Jesus as a whole but only in bits and pieces. In fact, what I knew of it usually came from the study of paintings and sculptures when we were young.”⁵ On her own, she tackled the multi-volume Histoire Ecclésiastique, a heavy-going history of the Church. She also studied the gospel of Saint Paul.

Lucia’s decision to take on Alvisetto’s religious education reflected her increasing interest in the sacred scriptures. Her father, who had been such an inspiring intellectual mentor to her and Paolina in their youth, had paid distracted attention to their religious upbringing. Over the years, Lucia had come to regret this lacuna. She believed a deeper knowledge of the gospels and the history of Christianity would give sustenance to a spiritual yearning she felt was growing with time. It is hard to pinpoint the beginning of Lucia’s religious awakening: it was part of a general trend sweeping across Europe as a reaction to the secularism of the eighteenth century and the anti-clerical excesses of the French Revolution. Perhaps her embrace of religion was accelerated by the emotional turmoil caused by Alvisetto’s illegitimate birth, Plunkett’s death, the subsequent scandal and the child’s adoption by Alvise. Certainly the letters she wrote to Paolina from Vienna already testified to a strengthening of her faith. But it was in Novara that she started to observe church rituals with great diligence and devotion. Every day, during her first winter there, she got in the habit of bundling up and going off to attend early morning and evening services at the neighbourhood church of Saint Gaudentius—she much preferred the intimacy of the small parish church to the stateliness of the Duomo in the city’s main square. She also looked for new places of worship as she explored the city, and she was always eager to join mass in the church of a neighbourhood she was not yet familiar with. In the early spring, when it was warm enough to venture out in the countryside, the long walks she took with Alvisetto and Vérand often turned into impromptu pilgrimages to one of the ancient religious sanctuaries that dotted the hills around the city.

Alvise encouraged these outings. Much of his work as governor of Agogna depended on his good relations with local church officials. Napoleon’s first invasion of northern Italy, back in 1796, had been so fiercely anti-clerical it had caused a great deal of acrimony and even violence between the French troops and the local peasantry. The emperor had since made peace with Rome and signed a Concordat in 1801, but relations with the clergy remained tense throughout the Kingdom of Italy, especially in the smaller cities and towns, where the influence of the church was deeply embedded. Alvise soon discovered that the cooperation of parish priests was indispensable in enforcing the conscription quotas to fill the ranks of the Armée d’Italie, the new Italian army Napoleon had placed under the command of Prince Eugène. In return for the priests’ help, Alvise obtained an exemption for young married men. This earned him the gratitude of the population.

In March 1807, Princess Augusta gave birth to her first-born, a little girl she and Prince Eugène named Joséphine, like her grandmother. Alvise ordered that the city be illuminated by a thousand torches. The bishop sang a Te Deum in the Duomo. He also agreed to a special request by Alvise: the display of the sacred host to the congregation. It was a notable concession, and yet another example of how relations with the Church were improving in Alvise’s district.

As spring turned into early summer, Lucia travelled throughout the region of the Agogna. She crossed wide green valleys, filed through narrow gorges and climbed mountains to visit ancient villages mostly inhabited by women and children, the men having gone over the mountains to look for work in France and Switzerland. The villagers were poor but very dignified. She reported to her sister:

They survive on a simple diet of chestnuts and milk, yet they have healthy complexion and appear very robust. The women wear unusual and rather beautiful clothes and fix their long hair in elaborate ways. They are very hospitable—and I was very fortunate to make it back home without succumbing to chestnut indigestion.⁶

Paolina was always in Lucia’s thoughts during these excursions for she had the most natural impulse to share with her sister everything that was new and strange and interesting. One day, as Lucia crossed the dry bed of the Agogna, she found a pebble in the perfect shape of a heart. She sent it to Paolina, with these words: “Dear sister, how truly happy I would be if only I could live with you.” The dialogue between them never ceased, and made their separation a little more bearable.

At the time, Lucia was under the spell of an unusual book by Madame de Genlis, Les Savinies. It was set in an imaginary Swiss romantic landscape and told the story of two sisters who loved each other very much and lived happily together until one of the two was married off. The other sister became twice jealous: first, because her sister now loved someone else, and second, because, in the past, she too had had feelings for the same man. The husband-to-be left town on business, and the future bride, noticing her sister’s sadness, got her to speak her mind. Realising she was the cause of her misery, she renounced her marriage and vowed never to see the man again. The other sister blamed herself for confessing the truth and died of grief. The surviving Savinie asked to be buried with her sister, and soon followed her to the grave.

Lucia gave her sister a long, rambling account of the story. She drew a parallel between her love for Paolina and that of the two Savinies, although she quickly added that the comparison referred only to their “happy life together,” before the intrusion of the husband-to-be. The moral of Madame de Genlis’s tale was clear, she concluded: “Reason must temper even the most innocent love.”⁷ But a closer reading of the letter makes one wonder whether Lucia was not also making a veiled, perhaps even unconscious reference to Maximilian Plunkett, whom both she and her sister had loved in their own way (Paolina’s relationship with “the worthy colonel” remained platonic). After Maximilian’s death, Lucia never once mentioned his name in her letters to Paolina—at least not in those which have survived. And writing about the two Savinies is probably the closest she ever came to evoking his memory in her correspondence with her sister.

By the end of 1807 the quiet provincial life began to lose its early appeal. Lucia complained:

We are immersed in permanent fog. I spend all of my time in my room and I am bored to death. Alvise stays all day at the Prefecture and my son is busy studying. During my first year here I explored the city and the region; this year I have nothing left to describe except this one room where I take my meals, I sleep, I get dressed, I read, I write and I receive occasional guests.⁸

Her humdrum days in Novara came abruptly to an end in early January 1808, when, as Alvise had predicted, she was summoned to the court in Milan to take up her duties as lady-in-waiting to Princess Augusta. She hurriedly packed her luggage, bade farewell to her husband, her son and the house staff, and was off to the capital.

Marchioness Barbara Litta, who, as Princess Augusta’s lady of honour, was in charge of protocol at the royal palace, warned Lucia to prepare herself for a demanding schedule, especially during those weeks when she would have to be in attendance at the palace from early morning until late at night. She was to draw a monthly salary with which to cover her expenses. The palace that was to house Princess Augusta’s twenty-four ladies-in-waiting was still being refurbished, but Marchioness Litta found her temporary lodgings in the house of Countess Cattaneo.

Lucia was immediately caught up in a whirlwind of activity. She rushed to the hairdresser, went shopping for clothes, introduced herself to the other ladies-in-waiting, who, she found out, were all Milanese but a few. She called on the most prominent families in town as well as the foreign dignitaries. And after a few days, the exacting Marchioness Litta was ready to present her to Princess Augusta—who was pregnant with her second child.

Lucia found the princess beautiful and charming. Despite her young age, she was at ease in her important role. She was also very much in love with Prince Eugène and absorbed by family life. When they had married, in Munich, in the spring of 1806—a marriage entirely orchestrated by Napoleon after his resounding victory at Austerlitz—Augusta had been in love with the Prince of Baden, to whom she had been promised, and had thrown herself at the feet of Empress Joséphine, imploring her not to impose the marriage with her son. In the end she had succumbed to powerful reasons of state—Napoleon crowned her father king of Bavaria—but then she had met the amiable Prince Eugène, and had liked him from the start. A year and a half later, with a child in the crib and a second one on the way, they were a handsome, loving couple.

Despite the difference in age—Lucia was nearing forty while Princess Augusta was only twenty-two—they got along well. The problem, she told Paolina one week into her job, was the nature of the work rather than her employer:

I lead the dullest existence, rushing from my apartment to Court and from Court to my apartment. What does one do at Court? Well, the evenings in which we have Grand cercle (“Large Circle”) we tend to sit around for about an hour before moving to the gaming room. When the card-playing is over the Princess rises, says a few nice words to us and I run back home as fast as I can. When we have Petit cercle (“Small Circle”), only those of us attached to the Court are invited. The evening usually begins with a session of baby-watching: we crowd around ten-month-old Joséphine, Princess of Bologna, as she plays in her pen. Very interesting…Then we move on to our usual card games and Madame de Sandizell^*18 serves tea. The Princess chats with us familiarly when the playing is over and then retires, and so do I. This is what my life is like on Sundays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from seven in the evening until about midnight. On Mondays a ball is held at one of the prominent Milanese houses and the Court is present. Which means I have Wednesday and Saturday evenings off. I spent last Wednesday evening sitting alone by the fire; today is Saturday and I’ll do the same as I am too exhausted to go to the opera. In fact I’m rather looking forward to going to bed early as I have only just now been informed that, starting tomorrow, I am on duty for the entire week!⁹

To be “on duty” meant one had to be in attendance at the palace from the time the princess got up in the morning until she retired at night. So the following morning, a Sunday, Lucia arrived early at the royal palace to breakfast with Princess Augusta. They proceeded to mass, Lucia burdened by the weight of her long, heavy velvet mantle. She was allowed a short break to change into a more comfortable dress, but had to be back promptly at the palace for Petit cercle. During the rest of her week, she arrived at the palace at eleven wearing a déshabillé. She stayed with Princess Augusta for lunch and accompanied her on her early afternoon walk. “She loves to take long walks beyond the city limits,” Lucia noted with slight impatience:

We’re back by four, at which point I’m allowed to go home to change so that I can reappear for dinner on time, usually wearing a round dress. Marchioness Litta has had to reprimand the Milanese ladies, who have been rather negligent about arriving for dinner on time. The reason is that when they go home to change, many are tempted to eat at their own table rather than at Court.¹⁰

After a gruelling week, always rushing to the hairdresser, changing clothes three times a day, coming home late and getting up early, Lucia was primed for release. At that week’s ball, she stayed until half past one in the morning and danced “like I haven’t danced in fifteen years.”¹¹

Lucia did what was expected of her, with diligence and grace; but she found it hard to muster any kind of enthusiasm for her job. She resented being kept away from Alvisetto, who was still in Novara, having enrolled as a day student in the Collegio Gallarino to study Italian, Latin, geography and mathematics. She did not complain to her husband because she feared his irritated reaction. But to her sister she confessed “how really awful this arrangement is for me.”¹²

Alvise was determined to send Alvisetto off to boarding school in Paris, for Napoleon wanted the sons of officials in the foreign kingdoms of the Empire to be educated in France. Lucia did not see what good could possibly come from sending her eight-year-old child far away from home. She lost no opportunity to underscore how miserable little boys were in boarding school, reminding her husband that Paolina’s two boys, Venceslao and Ferighetto, thirteen and eleven, had sadly lost their natural verve at their school in Padua.

The issue, however, went beyond Alvisetto’s education. Since joining the government in the Italian kingdom, Alvise had wholly embraced the Napoleonic cause. His earlier criticism of the French, which he had vented so many times as he struggled to gain the trust of the Habsburgs, was now a thing of the past. Napoleon had brought Europe to his feet. He was creating a new order, a modern society. The future, Alvise was now convinced, belonged to this extraordinary man he had met in Brescia a decade earlier. “I work twelve to fourteen hours a day,” he observed, “but it is worth it because I know that I am working for the hero of all time.”¹³

Alvise was increasingly confident that the Italian kingdom was going to become an important part of Napoleon’s expanding empire; as a result, Alvisopoli would continue to prosper—a model estate in a model kingdom. He saw himself as the founder of a dynasty in a Napoleonic Europe, and he was seized with the notion that Alvisopoli would become, one day soon, an autonomous duchy within the kingdom—with himself as the first Duke of Alvisopoli. To set the seal on his political metamorphosis, Alvise commissioned a monumental statue of Napoleon from Angelo Pizzi, the much admired director of the sculpture department at Venice’s Arts Academy, and planned to place it in the centre of Alvisopoli’s main square—certainly not in the damp ground-floor hall of Palazzo Mocenigo, where it eventually came to rest.

Alvise grew impatient with those Venetians who felt a nostalgic attachment to the old Republic and who still referred to Venice as their “fatherland.” Among them was Lucia. She did not live in the past, as some of the more conservative old patricians did, but she had no sense of loyalty towards Napoleon or to the Kingdom of Italy, and certainly no great love for her duties at court. Lucia still thought of herself as a Venetian, and she felt the deepest attachment to her Venetian heritage. The Republic no longer existed, of course; there was no Venetian fatherland to speak of any more. But it survived as a spiritual place to which Lucia still felt deeply connected. It pained her to hear Alvise say, as he often did, that the Kingdom of Italy was his new fatherland and that he loved it “more than he loves Venice.” Although she was wary of “the self-inflicted suffering that comes from standing against destiny,” she found her husband’s constant praise of the emperor exaggerated and even jarring.¹⁴

Lucia also cringed at the way Venetian ladies tried to please and befriend their Milanese counterparts, “to tie themselves” to the new kingdom, she noted with slight repulsion:

How many visits they pay, how many presents they give, how they seek a confidential tone in addressing women they hardly know, even using the familiar tu. Wrongly perhaps, I tie myself to no one. I lead a withdrawn life, never going out on those nights I am not on duty at Court. Ah, if only it were a Petit cercle of old friends! The thing is that I am nearing forty—and it’s too late for me to start all over again.¹⁵

In the winter of 1809, a year after settling in Milan, Lucia moved into her rooms in Palazzo Visconti with the other ladies-in-waiting who were from out of town. She regretted not having the privacy of her own apartment, away from her colleagues, where she could put up her feet and entertain a few Venetian friends when she was not on duty. But she was also tired of moving her things from place to place: she had lived in four different apartments since arriving in town, “the last one so unbearably smelly”¹⁶ that her clean, freshly painted rooms in Palazzo Visconti were a relief in that respect.

Princess Augusta personally gave Lucia the new uniform she was to wear at court during the day: a long, light-brown smock buttoned tightly around her neck. “Apparently the French word for it is sarte,” Lucia told her sister, complaining it made her look like a mother superior. “More and more I feel as if I were living in a nunnery.”¹⁷

After serving for two years in Agogna, Alvise was awarded the Iron Cross, an order established by Napoleon to gratify the new elite he was forging in his Empire, in consideration of his administrative achievements in Novara and Alvisopoli. Napoleon also made him a count (a non-hereditary title assigned on the basis of merit), and a senator of the Kingdom, a prestigious but largely ceremonial post. Alvise’s senatorial duties often brought him to Milan, but he spent the greater part of his time on his estates. All of his landholdings were now consolidated in one large agency, headquartered in Alvisopoli.

Alvisetto, nearly ten, moved to Milan to be with his mother for a year, before finally going off to boarding school. He had spent a satisfactory year at the Collegio Gallarino in Novara. His teachers were pleased by his effort and he had matured. “He’s not as restless as he was when we first moved back to Italy,” Lucia noted. “Alvise is also quite happy with his conduct though he would like him to be more dedicated to schoolwork.”¹⁸ The plan was still to send him to Paris, but Alvise agreed to let him spend a year in Milan to assuage Lucia’s anxiety.

Vérand moved to Milan as well, to supervise Alvisetto’s lessons, as Lucia was at court most of the day. She hired a kind, well-mannered Austrian music teacher who turned out to be Carl Thomas Mozart, the eldest son of Wolfgang Amadeus. When his famous father had died, in 1791, Carl Thomas was only six. At thirteen, he was sent to work as an apprentice in a commercial firm in Livorno. His dream, he told Lucia, was to start a piano business, but he had not been able to raise the necessary capital. He had gone back to studying music and for the past four years had made a living by giving piano lessons in Milan. “Of course he’s not his father,” Lucia told Paolina rather cruelly. “But he’s very sweet, plays well enough, and he teaches in German, so Alvisetto can practise the language.”¹⁹

Lucia’s life at court resumed its dull and predictable pace after the summer furlough. She continued to do her duty without any special affection for the kingdom she served, and she still kept her distance from the scheming Milanese ladies who hovered around Prince Eugène and Princess Augusta. It occurred to her that the viceroy and the vicereine were probably the people she had grown fondest of in the period she had been in Milan. They were not an especially lively couple, but she came to value their kindness and consideration.

Lucia’s relationship with Princess Augusta revolved a great deal around clothes, as the Vicereine was constantly giving her rich gala dresses, more informal round dresses and easy-to-wear déshabillés from the best houses in Paris. The fabrics were among the finest, the colours fashionable, the gold and silver linings and bordures always of the best quality. Princess Augusta gave Lucia two or three dresses at a time, and she always remembered her birthday and her saint’s day. Lucia loved beautiful clothes and liked to be à la page, and of course she had plenty of opportunities to wear her new dresses. But she accumulated so many of them that she did not know where to store them any more. “[The Princess] is so generous with all of us and of course I am grateful for everything she gives me,” she told Paolina, “but I have reached the point where a new dress fails to excite much interest in me.”²⁰

Somewhat to her surprise, Lucia found that clothes were often Prince Eugène’s preferred topic of conversation as well. “The Viceroy called me to his room last night,” she wrote to Paolina conspiratorially,

He said: “In the last few days I’ve looked at many waistcoats and have chosen several for myself. There is one I like especially, and I’ve ordered a cut of the same fabric for you to make a dress. You know the fashion is now for men and women to wear matching dresses and waistcoats…”²¹

The fabric was a beautiful velours cachemire, with a flower pattern embroidered in the Ottoman style. Lucia was flattered to be the object of Prince Eugène’s attentions, and she enjoyed the light flirtation between them. But she found it odd, and vaguely frustrating, that the Prince did not wish to discuss more serious matters.

Fashion, of course, was what the ladies-in-waiting mostly talked about among themselves and with Princess Augusta during the afternoon stroll or after their game of cards at Petit cercle. There were tedious disquisitions on the merit of short sleeves over long sleeves, on the latest designs from Paris, on the colours in vogue that season. Conversation was seldom lively and never brilliant. No one touched politics. Very little was mentioned about art, literature or even music. In the early days of the Cisalpine Republic, when poets and artists had been drawn to Milan by the young Bonaparte, the intellectual life had been quite vibrant. But after the proclamation of the Empire and the transformation of the Cisalpine Republic into the Kingdom of Italy, the monotonous rituals of royal etiquette imported from Paris created a soporific atmosphere.

Milan was an emasculated capital. All the important decisions were made in Paris. Prince Eugène took his orders directly from Napoleon. Members of the government, senators, courtiers: everyone wanted to be in Paris rather than Milan. Carriages with travelling officials crowded the road to France across the Alps that was being enlarged. “There seems to be a permanent migration to the French court,” Lucia grumbled. “Every minute one dignitary or another is leaving town with the excuse that he must go fetch his orders.”²²

In 1809, Prince Eugène travelled to Paris to be at his mother’s side as she faced one of the most trying periods in her life. Napoleon had made it clear to Empress Joséphine that there would come a time when she would have to step aside and allow him to marry a young European princess capable of bearing him an heir. After ruminating over the matter for many months, Napoleon decided the time for a divorce had come. It was not an easy decision; he remained deeply attached to his wife, even as they saw less and less of each other and other women came into his life. But having learnt that, contrary to what he had long assumed, he was not sterile—at the end of 1806 Eléanore de la Plaigne, one of his lovers, had given birth to a boy named Léon—he now wanted a legitimate son in order to ensure a Bonaparte dynasty. The divorce papers were signed on 14 December 1809, during a tense, tearful ceremony at the Tuileries. Joséphine read a note handed to her by the foreign minister, Prince Talleyrand, declaring that, since she could no longer hope to bear children, in the interest of France she was “happy to offer this greatest proof of her devotion and attachment.” The emperor, to the irritation of the Bonaparte brothers and sisters who had always detested her, paid one last homage to the woman “who has illuminated my life for fifteen years and whose memory shall always be present in my heart.”²³

Joséphine retained the title of empress. She was given full ownership of Malmaison, the beautiful country palace outside Paris where she lived, and her yearly stipend rose to a combined three million francs, a huge sum of money even for a profligate spender like her. Behind the scenes, Talleyrand and the interior minister, Fouché, were already putting the finishing touches to Napoleon’s offer to marry Marie Louise, the eighteen-year-old daughter of the Austrian emperor, Francis I. The news was leaked to the papers and in early February 1810, Lucia read about it in the Milanese gazettes.

Alvise joined the senate delegation that headed to Paris to congratulate the emperor on his marriage. Lucia was also making the trip: the vicereine was taking all her ladies-in-waiting with her to attend the wedding. At first, the thought of leaving Alvisetto threw Lucia into a state of turmoil. “I am desperate about this sudden departure and I can’t wait to be back,” she told her sister. “Oh, do write to my little boy, and give him the sound advice you give to your own children. I beg you to take my place in everything while I am gone.”²⁴

However “desperate” she was, Lucia could not entirely stifle the excitement of going to Paris for the first time. “Ah, Paris! Paris!” she cried out, obviously thrilled and anxious at the same time.

Alvise had been to Paris twice before the Revolution, and he had described the city many times to Lucia. She was familiar with the major monuments and churches and famous landmarks through many Parisian novels she had read—especially those of Madame de Genlis. The Louvre, the Tuileries, Saint Germain, Notre Dame, the bridges over the Seine—were all part of Lucia’s mental map of Paris. The more vivid images of this imaginary landscape, however, had come to her from Madame Dupont, her childhood governess, who had enchanted her and Paolina with her wonderful tales of the city where she had grown up. Madame Dupont was still very much part of the family. After Lucia and Paolina were married, she had stayed in Venice, living as lady companion in several prominent Venetian houses. Lucia made a point of giving her a small monthly stipend to cover basic expenses, and she was always happy to see her whenever she was back in Venice. Now she had a mission to accomplish: discover Madame Dupont’s Paris. “I should so much like to find the places she often mentioned to us,” she told Paolina. “All the names changed after the Revolution and then again with the Directoire and the Empire. But I have her old address and the name of her parish and I shall do my best to uncover the original denominations.”²⁵

Napoleon and Marie Louise were married by proxy in Vienna on 11 March 1810. Two days later, Lucia left Milan heading west, towards the French Alps. She paid for the trip with her salary. She and Countess Trotti, a fellow lady-in-waiting, shared the travel expenses. They bought a bastardella, a sturdy, four-wheel coach hitched to four horses, for fifty-two sequins. There were six passengers in all, as both Lucia and Countess Trotti brought a personal maid (Lucia had Margherita with her) and a servant. It took ten days to reach Paris. The journey went smoothly apart from the discomfort of being piled into a small coach for so long. The snows had melted in the mountains and the new road Napoleon had built over the pass of Mont Cenis was clear—the crossing of the Alps was faster now as it was no longer necessary to transfer to hand-carried chaises to get over the pass.

In Paris, Lucia was immediately drawn back into the circle of Italians “who have come here in droves from the kingdom.”²⁶ Prince Eugène and Princess Augusta were there to welcome her and the other ladies-in-waiting, and the travelling Milanese court soon resumed its daily rituals under the watchful eye of Marchioness Litta. Before she knew it, Lucia was getting in and out of round dresses (day-wear), douillettes (quilted silk over-garments) and negligees (morning gowns), and following the Princess around, as if she had never left Milan. Prince Eugène, having weathered the stressful divorce between Napoleon and his mother, took a new pleasure in chaperoning his flock of rustling ladies. Each night, he gave out seats in the boxes assigned to him at the Comédie Française. “The choice of plays is horrible, the acting very common,”²⁷ Lucia opined, after seeing a production of Molière’s L’Avare—clearly she found it hard to enjoy Paris on such a short leash.

Archduchess Marie Louise, meanwhile, was on her way from Vienna. She stopped frequently along the way to wave at the crowds and reply to all the speeches that were made in her honour. “The word in Paris,” Lucia told Paolina, “is that she is poised and quick and wins everyone over wherever she goes.” Napoleon was waiting for her at the castle of Compiègne, an hour out of Paris. He supervised the expensive decoration of her apartment and personally chose the works of art that adorned the rooms, including Canova’s beautiful Psyché about to be kissed by Cupid. “I hear he is in a complete tizzy over her and frets over a thousand details. He sat at length in the carriage he sent to Strasbourg for her, just to make sure her seat was comfortable.”²⁸

When the archduchess stepped out of her carriage at Compiègne, Napoleon took her straight to her apartments. To the surprise, and indeed the disbelief of many dignitaries who had come to greet the future empress, they did not emerge until the following day. Having been assured that the marriage by proxy in Vienna was valid in the eyes of the Church, Napoleon wasted no time in putting his feisty young wife to the task.

The following week, their civil marriage was celebrated at Saint Cloud, and the next day they were married in a religious ceremony at the Tuileries, where the salon carré of the Louvre was transformed for the occasion in a dazzling imperial chapel. At Napoleon’s request, the ritual was the same that had been followed forty years earlier for the wedding of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

The emperor and the empress returned to Compiègne for their honeymoon in a state of complete enthralment—Marie Louise even took to making coffee for her husband every morning and within days she was calling him silly nicknames like “Nana” and “Popo.”²⁹ Napoleon gave every indication that he intended to linger in the arms of his wife at their countryside castle while important state papers piled up in his study. Prince Eugène and Princess Augusta, summoned to Compiègne with the rest of the court, brought their own vast retinue. Lucia felt her cloistered days were back:

I have been living like a monk since the day I arrived. Our residence has the appearance of a dormitory. The rooms open out on to this long corridor where lonely ladies-in-waiting pace up and down waiting for instructions. We pay each other visits, going from cell to cell. Our schedule is intense and rigid: we cannot leave the house even when we are not on duty all day long. [In the morning] we have breakfast together in the refectory. Then we walk over to the Empress’s quarters, and there we wait for their majesties to walk before us on their way to chapel. We follow the Empress. But only Princess Augusta, her maids of honour and those of us who are on duty are allowed to follow the Empress all the way inside.³⁰

Like all Habsburgs, Marie Louise was a fervent Catholic. Napoleon, anxious to please his wife, showed an unusual devoutness during the numerous religious ceremonies that began to take place at court. A rather startled Lucia, who well remembered young Bonaparte’s early crusade against the Pope when he first conquered Italy, reported that the emperor “seems completely absorbed by his prayers.” At Marie Louise’s request, all meat was forbidden at court during the week preceding Easter, and Napoleon extended the injunction to all the restaurants in the area of Compiègne, to make sure that wily dignitaries did not circumvent the court’s order.

The stay at Compiègne turned into the most tedious sojourn for everyone except the imperial couple. Occasionally, it was enlivened by a hunt in the surrounding woods. The event was never much fun for Lucia but at least it was an opportunity to leave the palace and get some fresh air:

Today we rushed through the woods in an open buggy, though we never actually saw the hunters, among whom was the Emperor. The Empress followed the hunt in her carriage, and we followed her. After six hours we stopped for a picnic lunch. I had a plate of asparagus and drank a glass of champagne.³¹

During her stay at Compiègne, Lucia managed to take two days off to visit the former empress, Joséphine, in the duchy of Navarre, sixty miles east of Paris. The small chateau of Navarre, to which Napoleon had in effect exiled his former wife for the duration of the wedding celebrations, was very run-down. The walls needed painting and the rooms seemed to lack proper furniture. There was, all about the house, a melancholy atmosphere of impermanence. But it quickly dissolved once Lucia stepped out into the gardens, which were nicely kept and very beautiful; she wondered if a caring gardener had made a point of preserving the structure and design of the lawns and the hedges and the flower beds while the chateau was left in a state of semi-abandon.

Joséphine had always seemed younger than her years, but now she looked old and worn, and her teeth were so black she barely opened her mouth when she spoke. Still, she was as amiable and warm-hearted as Lucia remembered her from their previous meeting in Venice in 1797. Soon the two were talking like old friends, and Lucia could not help mentioning how much she missed Alvisetto, and how she hated the idea of sending him off to boarding school in Paris. Joséphine could not have been more sympathetic: she knew what it meant to live separated from one’s children, and she told Lucia how much she had relied on Eugène and her daughter Hortense when going through the awful experience of her divorce from Napoleon. “We had the most pleasant time together,”³² Lucia later wrote to Paolina. The next day Joséphine, escorted by four imperial guards, took Lucia to Louvieux, six miles up the road, to see a textile plant. They spent a few carefree hours looking at new spinning machines and frames and designs, and running their hands over the beautiful fabrics.

After a month in Compiègne, Empress Marie Louise wondered aloud why so many Italian ladies were still following her around, and when she was told they were Princess Augusta’s ladies-in-waiting, she let it be known that they were no longer required to stay. To her relief, Lucia moved back to Paris and took rooms with Alvise at the Hotel d’Europe, in rue de Richelieu. Princess Augusta gave her ladies some time off in the city before returning to Italy, and Lucia at last had an opportunity to explore Madame Dupont’s Paris. “I want to see where she lived! I have the same curiosity as those visitors who rush to the birthplace of a Voltaire or a Rousseau—only more so since she was so much more important to us.”³³

Lucia’s quest was only partially successful: though she reached Madame Dupont’s neighbourhood, and wandered in very familiar terrain, she never found rue du Maçon, where her governess had grown up. The names of the streets were the main obstacle: none of them matched the ones Madame Dupont remembered from her youth. The urban landscape had also changed. During the Revolution, buildings had been destroyed, while churches had been turned into stables or barracks. Lucia wrote to Paolina:

Tell Madame I crossed Pont Saint Michel. She would not recognise it as all the side-buildings on the bridge have been torn down and replaced by two wide pavements. I recognised rue de la Houchette because I remembered Madame describing it as “small and crooked,” but today it is called something else. At the church of Saint Severin, I found a ninety-four-year-old man sitting by the front door—they live to a very old age where Madame comes from! He told me the church was reopened in 1802. It is quite beautiful inside, with as many as five naves. I asked about Madame Dupont’s family. The old man seemed to remember her father but he said they lived in rue du Foin, not rue du Maçon…³⁴

Lucia made her way back towards her hotel in rue de Richelieu, which was known as rue de la Loi during the Revolution and the Directoire, and had only just regained its original name. As she passed through the tree-lined esplanade in front of the Invalides, she suddenly recognised the proudly pouting lion of Venice, which the French had taken in 1797, as he looked down at the indifferent passers-by from the top of a fountain. On the spur of the moment, and despite having already walked for several hours, Lucia headed in the direction of Place du Carousel, for she remembered hearing that the great bronze horses Bonaparte had removed from the basilica in Saint Mark’s Square had been placed on the top of the new arc de triomphe. And sure enough, there they were, cantering awkwardly in the Parisian sky. They seemed small and ungainly from the ground. As Lucia stood there, increasingly indignant, her head turned upwards and her eyes squinting in the glare of the sun, she realised the horses were hitched to a gold-plated chariot. It was driven by two allegorical statues so entirely out of proportion they made the poor horses look rather like dogs.

Later she learnt that a bronze of Napoleon was to drive the chariot—the two allegorical pieces were merely substituting while the statue was completed. “Le char l’attend” (the chariot awaits him) was a pun on the word “charlatan” making the rounds in Paris.³⁵ Lucia had a good laugh when she heard it.

Despite her swollen feet, she was determined to continue what she referred to as the Madame Dupont Paris Tour, and devoted the next day to Saint Denis, the church of the kings of France, which her former governess had described many times to her. The damage from the revolutionary period was still visible on the facade as most of the statues were still headless. Her guide gave her a chilling account of what had occurred inside the church, which she passed on to Paolina.

The tombs of the kings were destroyed with sledgehammers and all the lead casings were taken away. The bones were extracted from the debris and scattered haphazardly in the local cemetery. The Jacobins brought heavy wagons into the church to cart off the lead bars that supported the roof, cracking the marble pavement as they came and went. Eventually, the roof crashed to the ground and destroyed the pavement completely.

Napoleon was having Saint Denis restored to its former splendour. He wanted his own mausoleum near those of the great French kings. Dozens of stonemasons, glassworkers and carpenters were at work when Lucia walked in. “The floor of the central nave is covered in shiny white marble while the side walls are black,” she described to her sister. “The great gothic windows have been refitted with the most beautiful glasswork. The atmosphere inside the church is again one of great dignity.” The Bonaparte mausoleum was below the ground level. “The door to His Majesty’s caveau [vault] is made of bronze-plated iron. There are three locks, each one covered by the head of a lion. Bumblebees, the emblem of the Bonapartes, are carved everywhere…”³⁶

Another landmark in Madame Dupont’s Paris was the Bois de Boulogne. “Do you remember how she enthused us with her descriptions of a most agreeable park, where the ladies met to ride their horses?” she asked Paolina. It turned out the Bois was no longer a bois. “It was reduced to a vast moor during the Revolution as all the trees were cut down to make heating wood. I saw the new shoots coming through, though—for posterity’s delight.” At the end of her walk, Lucia joined a crowd of Italian friends for a picnic lunch at Bagatelle, an open-air restaurant that had been very fashionable in pre-revolutionary days and that was now struggling to come back into vogue:

There were sixty of us and we ate under a big tent pitched in a lovely meadow in front of the pavilion commissioned by the Comte d’Artois^*19 during the reign of the last king and built in only forty days. It makes you sad to look at it now: everything is so dilapidated. All the furniture is missing. The walls and ceilings are in a state of utter neglect. The mirrors above the mantelpieces are the only thing left, though I doubt they are the original ones…³⁷

But the garden outside the pavilion was lovely, and the day was warm and beautiful. Excellent food was served at a buffet en plein air. There were tasty cold soups, fresh eggs, mutton chops, roast chickens and Lucia’s favourite fowl dish, pigeon à la crapaudine, and delicious spring peas, salads and strawberries. Most of the people there would soon be journeying back to Italy and the thought of going home no doubt enhanced the festive mood. As the wine flowed, the company became louder and Lucia joined a group singing old Venetian songs.

That evening, back at the Hotel d’Europe, Lucia was in her study, still feeling flushed from the day’s sunshine, when Alvise came in to announce that he was enrolling Alvisetto in a school in Paris. “I feel as if I had been struck by a thunderbolt,” Lucia wrote to Paolina in desperation. Only a few days earlier, Alvise had told her that since Alvisetto was studying well in Milan, he had decided to postpone his transfer to Paris by a year or two. But in the meantime he had received a letter from Monsieur Vérand saying that in fact Alvisetto’s grades were not improving at all. Even worse, he was rude to his teachers. She told her sister:

That fateful letter has changed things around completely and my husband now tells me he has already written to Milan giving instructions to send Alvisetto to Paris without delay. I cannot bear the thought of not seeing him for God knows how many years. He will become a stranger to his own parents. I feel deeply wounded by this whole affair.

Alvise and Lucia spent the second half of May and the first half of June looking at schools, from the smallest ones, where six or seven pupils were taught by a master in the old Socratic manner, to the more structured collèges with as many as 500 students, which the emperor strongly supported. They also looked for lodging arrangements at religious establishments and various pensionnats. Lucia complained to Paolina:

This search is killing me, I can’t even imagine how hard it will be to say goodbye to him. Tears are streaming down my face even as I write to you and I’m afraid you will find their trace all over this paper. But you are my sister, and you are a mother, and I know that you understand what I feel.

Lucia wanted to enlist the help of a person who might yet dissuade Alvise. “It is hard to find the right man, though. The French are not going to embrace my cause, while the Italians, who do not share Alvise’s opinion, don’t have enough influence over him. And those who have settled here have by now embraced French culture.” It occurred to her that the one person who had “considerable sway” over Alvise and might yet dissuade him was Joséphine, who had returned from Navarre and was spending a few days at Malmaison before leaving for the waters at Plombières, in Savoy. Lucia went over for lunch and the former empress agreed to talk to Alvise. In the afternoon, they walked in the park and visited the exotic animals that Joséphine had collected in her private zoo. Lucia winced as she caught sight of Joséphine’s two black swans swimming in the pond. She feared they were a bad omen, but kept her mouth shut.

A few days later Lucia told Paolina that “the [former] Empress has spoken to Alvise, and apparently Princess Augusta has also talked to him. But I don’t know what will come of all this. Alvise has not said a word to me about these attempts to dissuade him, and he is not aware that I know about them.”³⁸

In the end, Joséphine’s behind-the-scenes diplomacy helped to find a solution that was more acceptable to Lucia: Alvisetto would not go to boarding school but would lodge in a private house with Monsieur Vérand, and enrol in the prestigious Lycée Napoléon as a day student. “The separation will be painful but I shall be less anxious if Vérand is here,” Lucia conceded.³⁹ Alvise agreed to a two-year trial period instead of the full eight years of secondary education; and he promised Alvisetto would return to Italy if the experiment was not a success. A pleasant room for him and Vérand was found in rue Chanoineuse, near Notre Dame, in the apartment of Monsieur Humbert, a professor at the Lycée, and his Alsatian wife. “She seems like a good woman and Alvisetto will be able to practise his German with her,” Lucia observed, trying to make the best of the situation.⁴⁰

At the end of June, a dazed and travel-weary Alvisetto arrived in Paris with Vérand. Lucia was overjoyed to have him with her, and did not stop hugging and kissing him even though she already felt the pain of their imminent separation. A few days later, Princess Augusta informed her ladies-in-waiting they were all free to return to Milan. “She wants us to arrive in Italy before her, so it means we must leave right now,” Lucia explained to Paolina.⁴¹ As she helped Alvisetto settle in with the Humberts and prepare his school material, she noticed Alvise was growing agitated as the separation approached, though of course he tried not to show it. They were off in mid July, headed for the Swiss Alps. “I said goodbye to Alvisetto last night after putting him to bed,” Lucia wrote to her sister from the village of Morais, in the mountains near Geneva. “My poor little boy was in a terrible state, and wouldn’t stop crying.” Alvise insisted that it was all for Alvisetto’s own good, and reminded Lucia that when he was a little boy, his parents had sent him away to Rome for six years. Lucia found the comparison odd considering how miserable her husband had been as a child, but she let it go at that. “As I write,” she added, “the full moon is shining over this small village where we shall be spending the night but my heart is broken…”⁴²

Lucia took to her bed as soon as she reached Milan. She had felt progressively worse during her journey from Paris and she did not improve when she reached home. A persistent nausea settled over her, and she developed stomach pains which did not go away despite frequent bouts of vomiting. A rheumatic fever complicated her general condition. In the autumn, she also suffered a prolapse of the uterus which made it very uncomfortable to move around.

The doctors in Milan were confounded by Lucia’s mysterious ailments. She was prescribed the usual remedies: waters, mud cures, a meatless diet, no exercise. There was little improvement. The palazzo assigned to Princess Augusta’s ladies-in-waiting was temporarily unavailable and she ended up having to rent a “horrid” small apartment in Corso di Porta Rienza, on the road to Villa Bonaparte, from a man ominously called Signor Scorpioni. Alvise was away in the countryside and was not there to help with the move. Contributing to her general discomfort was the guilt she felt for leaving Alvisetto behind: it never went away, just like the nausea. Each letter she received from him tore her heart to pieces, and she longed to make the trip back to Paris even if she felt so awful. The doctors, however, were adamant: she should not even contemplate the idea of such a trip in her condition.

It was a miserable time made sadder by the death of Signora Antonia, the woman who had raised Alvisetto in Venice during the first years of his life. “I shall never forget how much I owe her for the loving way in which she took care of you when you were a little child,” she wrote to her son. “In death one cannot pray for oneself, you know that; but remember that the soul of the dead can draw relief from the mortification of those who remain behind. You can show your own attachment to Signora Antonia by offering her your tears and your prayers.”⁴³

Princess Augusta and Marchioness Litta came to Lucia’s rescue, reducing her duties at the royal palace to a minimum. The other ladies-in-waiting agreed to pick up the slack and substitute when it was her turn to be on duty. Princess Augusta regularly exempted her from the afternoon walk. In the evening, whether at Petit cercle or Grand cercle, Lucia usually sat in the back seats so she could make an early exit. “They all cooperate for my well-being,” Lucia assured an increasingly worried Paolina. When she was not at work she stayed at home. “I rarely take a coach, I don’t call on people, I don’t go shopping and never go out after lunch or dinner. Today I came home early, had lunch, rested. I went back to the palace in the evening for cercle but I was home by ten thirty. I ate a bowl of soup, undid my hair, undressed and am now in bed.”⁴⁴

A whole year passed without any serious signs of improvement. After going through a long list of Milanese and Venetian physicians, Lucia decided to consult Cavalier Paletta, a medicine man who was frowned upon by mainstream doctors for his unorthodox remedies. Paletta argued the prolapse of the uterus was caused by the weakness of the muscles and ligaments sustaining it, and recommended Lucia “insert a dose of iron-rich ochre” into her vagina.⁴⁵ She was to drink great quantities of the “acidulous” mineral water of Recoaro, near Vicenza, and apply to her loins the ferruginous deposits of that water. Lucia started the cure immediately, making frequent trips to Vicenza. For good measure she started rubbing her loins with holy water of the Blessed Virgin which Paolina had sent from a sanctuary near the town of Caravaggio. Within weeks she started to feel better. “The uterus is rising at last,” Lucia was relieved to notice.⁴⁶ She was uncertain as to the cause of her general improvement but she did not miss the opportunity to tell her sister that it was surely due to the miraculous water she had sent her. Her appetite returned, and she was able to hold her food down—except, of course, when she over-indulged, as when she ate “a plate of mushrooms, some fried fennel and grilled perch, in addition to various meat dishes and wine.” Not surprisingly, she spent the night “vomiting in great abundance.” “I know you are scolding me,” she sheepishly told her sister. “You are right to do so.”⁴⁷

Lucia’s health problems did not keep her away from her “little transactions”—Alvise’s affectionate but somewhat dismissive term for the small farming investments she had been making over the past decade. Every year, she made a small profit by selling potatoes she grew in two fields she rented from the agency in Alvisopoli. She also raised a few pigs for prosciutto and she kept a flock of sheep for their wool. Her earnings were enough to pay Madame Dupont’s stipend, to make a few charitable donations, to help Paolina when she was in need, and to spend a little on herself without having to ask Alvise for money.

In addition to her pigs and sheep, she now invested in a pair of six-month-old calves. Alvise, without showing great enthusiasm for Lucia’s commercial activity, had never openly discouraged it, allowing his impatience to grow until it erupted over the matter of the two calves. Signor Locatelli, the agency’s general manager, had rather innocently suggested to Lucia that she send her two calves to pasture over to the Valli Mocenighe, the large estate near Este where most of the cattle was raised, so she could feed them at no cost. Now a year had passed and Alvise told Lucia he did not want her doing business outside of Alvisopoli, adding that he wanted to buy the two calves from her at the same price for which she had purchased them since they had been fed on his land. Lucia answered curtly that she was selling on the market. One of Alvise’s agents sold the two calves for her, at zero profit, later admitting that he had sold them to the agency. Lucia told her sister that she was furious:

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.

At 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

By 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