Lucia (14 page)

The Veronese quickly realised Alvise was very different from his father. He certainly seems to have cut quite a figure in his own right in the somewhat provincial atmosphere of local society, the ladies in particular perking up in his presence, perhaps encouraged by Lucia’s prolonged absence. He formed several liaisons, none of them of any lasting importance. In fact, every trace of them would probably have disappeared had it not been for Alvise’s persistent neglect in destroying the evidence of his secret affairs. Thus one learns of the anonymous wife of a government official who confessed to him she stared “all day at your miniature portrait, isolated in my usual, rigid solitude.” Or of the equally mysterious but rather more sanguine Spanish lady who warned Alvise to keep his wandering eye in check “because in matters of gallantry, women of my
naciòn
do not care for the company of other ladies.”
⁴⁹
Verona, of course, was the city of Romeo and Juliet, but the tone of these letters to Alvise was hardly Shakespearian. It was more like vaudeville in the Venetian province.

His romantic entanglements did not distract Alvise from his official work. From the start he faced a tricky diplomatic controversy with France. Louis XVI’s young brother, the Comte de Provence, having failed to obtain a safe passage to Vienna, had fled from Paris and established his headquarters in Verona of all places, where he was attracting an increasing number of French émigrés.
^*8
The revolutionary government in Paris was pressing Venice for his expulsion. Alvise’s instructions were to mark time using whatever delaying tactic he could come up with. There was no legal ground for the Comte de Provence’s expulsion: he led a relatively dignified life in Verona, and the Venetian Republic was a neutral party in the war. Alvise remained on very cordial terms with him: as long as the anti-French conservative European alliance was forcing France on the defensive, there was no need to rush to comply with the request of the revolutionary government in Paris.

Lucia moved to Verona in the spring of 1794. Alvisetto was now a year old and it would have been difficult to postpone her trip any longer without appearing to snub the Veronese. She was reluctant to leave all the same. Her baby boy was neither strong nor particularly healthy. He was prone to catarrh, colds and fevers that kept Lucia in a state of perpetual worry. She wondered whether they had left Vienna too soon. She complained about the humid climate in Venice. She even asked herself if something might be wrong with her milk. The Mocenigos, meanwhile, observed Alvisetto with creeping scepticism, some relatives even beginning to make unpleasant remarks about “Memmo blood” after having praised that very same blood only a year before. Even Chiara, always very protective of her grandson, admitted he was a weak child. “The truth is,” she told Lucia shortly before their departure for Verona, “I shall remain in anguish until he has grown a little more, especially every time you set off on a journey.”
⁵⁰

In Verona, Alvisetto seemed to get stronger as the days grew warmer. Lucia still nursed him and was never far away from him. She would have liked to take advantage of the pleasant weather and parade him in the lively marketplace in
piazzale delle erbe,
or visit the square in front of the Roman arena, where the Veronese took their afternoon stroll, or walk along the banks of the Adige, its icy cold water rushing from the snows of the Dolomites towards the Adriatic Sea. But of course the wife of the captain was not free to move about as she pleased; as the first lady of Verona, Lucia was forced to follow a fairly rigid protocol and she felt a prisoner within the grey walls of the Palazzo del Capitano. The view from her apartment was cut off to the right by the Torre Lamberti, the 300-foot-high medieval tower that had served for centuries as Verona’s trusty sentinel, and to her left by the gothic spires of the church of Santa Maria Antica. The place was definitely austere.

Lucia stayed but a few months. In the summer she returned to Le Scalette, their villa on the Brenta, while Alvise shuttled back and forth between Verona, Le Scalette and Molinato. Alvisetto was in fine shape during the entire
villeggiatura
(summer season), taking his mother’s milk but also eating solids. He ventured about the house and the garden on his own feet, and uttered his first syllables. He played and laughed and basked in his mother’s company. In early autumn, they all travelled back to Verona. It was their last stint in the Palazzo del Capitano as Alvise’s tenure would soon be over. Lucia did not look forward to spending another winter in those inhospitable rooms, but at least she felt more confident about Alvisetto’s ability to endure the cold season.

With the first chills, however, Alvisetto’s catarrh began to thicken, and his breathing difficulties started again, with coughing bouts and the inevitable fevers. He ate with difficulty and often refused to take his mother’s milk. Lucia held him close to her. She stroked his chest and massaged his spindly legs and arms. She felt the frailty of her little boy at the end of her fingertips. In February the days grew longer and Lucia beheld the first promise of spring in the air. The worst seemed behind them. The winter would soon be over, she told her sister, and Alvisetto was going to be all right. The first couple of years were always the most difficult. It would be easier as time went by. Each day, each week that passed strengthened his chances.

Then the sudden cold spell at the end of February caught everyone by surprise. It all happened very swiftly. Alvisetto’s chronic catarrh problems worsened. The infection moved to his lungs. He breathed with increasing difficulty and would not take any food. Soon his body was burning hot. Lucia pressed damp cloths on his face and limbs to cool him down but the temperature would not abate. The doctors insisted on puncturing his veins and the bleedings made him weaker each day. “He is struggling against the illness,” a distraught Alvise wrote to his father on 9 March.
⁵¹
The little boy fought a few more days but the odds became overwhelming, and he stopped breathing in the early morning on the 12th.

Alvisetto was buried the same day in the church of San Sebastiano, around the corner from the Palazzo del Capitano. He was a month shy of his second birthday.
^*9

The tiny coffin had barely been lowered into the ground in San Sebastiano and covered with a marble slab when Mocenigo family politics took over again. The passing away of Alvisetto meant there was no male heir. Alvise, grief-stricken as he was, moved quickly to reassert control over family affairs, pre-empting those relatives who might be tempted to take advantage of the situation in order to lay their own claim to parts of the estate. As Alvise saw it, his principal liability was his own spendthrift father, who had grossly mismanaged the estate and was sinking deeper into personal debt in order to pursue his extravagant lifestyle. If Sebastiano was allowed to persist along that path, the entire Mocenigo fortune would soon be at risk. Alvise confronted his father, who was in very poor health, and forced him to relinquish control over the estate. In May 1795, only two months after Alvisetto’s death, father and son signed an agreement that made Alvise de facto head of the family. He took over his father’s conspicuous debts in exchange for complete control of the family holdings. He also agreed to pay his father a yearly stipend of 9,000 ducats, a proviso that in the end proved unnecessary: Sebastiano died a broken man a few weeks later.

W
hen the deal between Alvise and his father was made known, Chiara told Lucia she was now “free to move about as you please within the land of the Mocenigos.”
⁵²
It was a strange thing to say given what she herself referred to as “the sad circumstances” that had led to the new arrangement. Was it simply an awkward attempt at consoling her daughter-in-law? Or maybe the spontaneous cry of one who had clearly not been able to move around as she pleased in those lands ever since marrying into the family? Whatever the reason for that remark, it is doubtful Lucia paid much attention to it. After the death of her son, she retreated into a stunned silence. Not a single letter from that period has come down to us. Not even a cursory note, nothing at all, month after month, as if a dark chasm had opened up before her and she had fallen deep inside it.

Chapter Four

THE FALL OF VENICE

I
n the spring of 1796, Napoleon Bonaparte came charging across the Alps at the head of some 40,000 ill-fed and poorly clad soldiers. His instructions from the Directoire in Paris were to tie down the Austrian army in northern Italy in order to facilitate the main French offensive against the Habsburg Empire along the Rhine. Bonaparte went well beyond his mandate: moving with astonishing speed, he led his ragtag army to a string of spectacular victories, crushing the Austrians at Montenotte, and again, in rapid succession, at the battles of Millesimo and Dego. Then he turned against the Piedmontese, Austria’s allies in northern Italy, and defeated them at Ceva and Mondovi. The Piedmontese taken care of, he again set off in pursuit of the Austrians across the plains of Lombardy, routing the enemy at the battle of Lodi. Barely a month after crossing the Alps, the twenty-six-year-old general entered Milan as liberator and set about establishing the Cisalpine Republic. Meanwhile, the shattered Austrian army retreated north and forced its way into the Venetian fortress of Peschiera, the gateway to the Tyrol.

The sudden occupation of Lombardy brought the French revolutionary army right up to the western border of the Venetian Republic. Bonaparte’s descent into northern Italy had been so swift, his legend had grown so fast, that the ruling oligarchy in Venice looked upon him with as much confusion as fear. Incredibly, it clung to a feckless policy of “unarmed neutrality,” and thus the Republic remained open to an invasion by a force even half the size of Bonaparte’s. A feeling of unease settled over the city as the French made repeated forays into Venetian territory and warned menacingly that they would soon be “sipping coffee” in Saint Mark’s Square.
¹

L
ucia sensed the apprehension that was in the air, but she kept her distance from the world around her. Only a year had passed since Alvisetto’s death, and she was still learning to live with her grief. At first the pain had pressed against her heart and seared her lungs to a point where she had only wanted to stop breathing. But it had slowly evolved, changing in intensity and moving inside her, penetrating every particle. Now it seemed to have reached the end of its long mutation. It was not as sharp, and came over her in waves, like fog rolling in, deep and all-encompassing.

Alvisetto would have turned three that spring, old enough to run about the house and gambol alongside his mother in the narrow streets of Venice. When Lucia ventured out of Palazzo Mocenigo, she usually walked over to the church of Santo Stefano for morning mass or simply to sit at the family pew, finding comfort in the smell of incense and the soft-spoken voices around her. Paolina sometimes joined her for a walk. On such occasions, Lucia went to the balcony to watch her sister’s gondola make its way down the Grand Canal before mooring at the docking of Palazzo Mocenigo. Together they walked out through the courtyard and into the narrow back-alley behind the
palazzo
that led to the busy streets of San Samuele. At other times, she joined Paolina directly in her gondola and they travelled downstream, all the way to Saint Mark’s Square, before stepping ashore for a stroll. During these outings, Lucia remained aloof, taking in only fragments of the conversations she heard. She returned to life little by little.

Alvise rarely went out with Lucia. He had his own way of mitigating the pain for the loss of their son: every day he threw himself into work, hoping to regain a sense of purpose by directing all his energies to serving the Republic. Soon after Bonaparte’s invasion of Lombardy, he was appointed governor in Brescia, a gritty manufacturing city in the alpine foothills, near the western frontier of the Venetian Republic. He was to make contact with the elusive French commander-in-chief and gauge his intentions regarding Venice. But he had literally just settled in the Governor’s Palace when Bonaparte entered the city and came looking for him on horseback, surrounded by a cluster of prancing young officers in blue uniform.

Alvise later told Lucia that he was surprised by the general’s appearance: he was so small and skinny and dishevelled that at first glance he looked like a boy-man, a strangely magnetic creature, very youthful yet astonishingly self-assured. During that first meeting, Bonaparte was “in an excellent mood” and expressed “the kindest feelings” towards Venice. They went for a walk around the
piazza
and talked amicably, while the officers nodded eagerly at Bonaparte’s every word, often repeating what he had just said. As the day wore on, however, Bonaparte began to press Alvise for logistical information. He demanded to know why, if Venice was neutral, it had allowed the Austrians to occupy the fortress of Peschiera, a bastion of the Venetian defense system. Alvise reminded him that the Venetian garrison had been forcefully ousted from the fortress by the Austrians, but he made little headway. Bonaparte’s earlier, affable mood turned dark. He became irritable, unpredictable: “In a flash, even the most innocent remark turns him into the most ferocious person if he so much as suspects it contains a hint of opposition to him.”
²
Alvise became more cautious, making sure he pulled “all the right strings” during their conversations, so as not to upset “this very conceited man who believes he is superhuman.” Yet for all his guardedness, he was drawn to the excitement surrounding Bonaparte. He kept the Governor’s Palace open day and night. Officers, engineers, food commissars, dispatchers came and went at all hours in an atmosphere of feverish confusion. There was something mesmerising “about these new men, alluring, seductive, teeming with ideas, filled with courage, always on the move, always writing, always singing.”
³
He described the French soldiers as “electrified,” a new term made fashionable by the progress of electrostatics.

Lucia did not join Alvise in Brescia. Had she been allowed to decide for herself she probably would have gone. She was intrigued by Alvise’s reports, by his own mixed feelings about the French, and about their charismatic commander-in-chief. She sensed the energy in his letters, and she thought it would do her good to be more active, to participate in the work of her husband. But he had left Venice at such short notice that they had not had time to make plans to move out together, and now the situation seemed so uncertain as to discourage any decision.

Bonaparte did not stay long in Brescia. Alvise organised a banquet in his honour, to which he invited the local nobility. The wine flowed. The mood was festive. The French generals raised a number of toasts to the Venetian Republic. Bonaparte whispered to Alvise that he was going to stay for a few days, even hinting that he might like to spend the night at the Governor’s Palace. But towards midnight he abruptly took leave saying he was returning to his headquarters at the monastery of Saint Euphemia, just outside the city limits. During the night, the bulk of the French forces under the command of General André Masséna lifted camp and moved rapidly north towards the Austrian defence lines. Alvise joined Bonaparte early next morning just as he was leaving town to join his troops. The commander-in-chief assured him he would be back within twenty-four hours, but he did not return. The next day, at the head of his men, he stormed the fortress of Peschiera and crushed the fast-retreating Austrians. Alvise received a dispatch from Bonaparte’s chief of staff, General Louis Alexandre Berthier: “We have defeated the enemy and crossed the river Mincio, and are now pursuing them…We have mowed down their cavalry and the battlefield is covered with their dead.”
⁴

Alvise was still in Brescia in early June, when Bonaparte ordered the occupation of Verona, the largest and most important city on the Venetian mainland, in order to protect his line of retreat. General Masséna crossed the river Adige and entered the city unopposed: fearing the French would torch the city, the Venetian commandant decided not to resist. The news stunned Venetians: grabbing Verona was a blatant violation of the Republic’s neutrality. The government tried to shake itself out of its long lethargy. Crusty ambassadors went to work in the European capitals. What little remained of the fleet was ordered back to protect the city. Restoration was begun on the old fortifications scattered around the lagoon. A tax was levied on the population. Foreign ships were forbidden entry to the harbour. But these were tepid half-measures which did not really strengthen the Republic and only irritated Bonaparte.

Alvise returned to Venice to argue, with a handful of senators, in favour of quickly raising an army and shifting to a policy of
armed
neutrality. He saw such a step not so much as a last-minute defensive measure—after seeing the French army at close quarters, he was under no illusion about the possibility of Venice winning a war—but as a move that might get the Republic back into the diplomatic game which it had played so expertly in the past. His proposals, however, were voted down; the old Republic withdrew into its shell, burrowing in the brackish waters of the lagoon in the hope that the threat from the mainland would subside.

Bonaparte had received clear instructions from Paris: Venice was a neutral country and he was not to take hostile action against it. But he was determined to chase the Austrians across the Alps and all the way to Vienna before another French general stole his thunder by reaching the Habsburg capital from the Rhine. By seizing Peschiera and occupying Verona he had shown that he was ready to take whatever step he thought necessary to strengthen his position vis à vis the Austrians, no matter what the politicians in Paris had to say. Bonaparte has often been accused of betraying Venice and ultimately causing its downfall. But he never expressed an intention to protect or defend the old Republic, and the accusation of betrayal has always had a hollow ring. He was playing politics on an extremely volatile chessboard and there was just as much improvisation on his part as there was calculation. In the summer of 1796, he still did not know what to do about Venice—though he clearly intended to use the Republic to his advantage in the larger struggle with Austria. As late as July he went so far as to offer the bewildered Venetian government the chance to join him in an anti-Austrian alliance. Had Venice accepted, it might have saved itself. But the pro-Austrian sentiment of the largely conservative Venetian ruling class prevailed, and the offer was turned down. Already irritated by Venice’s feeble defensive measures, Bonaparte took this new rebuff as a personal affront, and his grudge hardened into contempt. For the next few months, he turned his attention to the rest of Italy, leaving Venice to sink in its quagmire.

Alvise and Lucia spent the whole of that summer at Molinato. The estate had lost that air of desolation it had when Alvise had first taken Lucia to see it a few years earlier. Indeed she would have had some difficulty in recognising the place, which was developing very rapidly under her husband’s assiduous supervision. Rows of poplars and beeches grew along the ditches and canals that criss-crossed the field in neat, geometrical patterns. There were two large cattle barns to house the expanding livestock and a sheep shed. Seven new farmhouses housed labourers and their families. Molinato had a general store, a tavern and a chapel. Two brick factories were under construction, as Alvise intended to build many more buildings in the years ahead. Lucia wrote to her sister that she had never seen her husband work so tirelessly at improving the estate. During the summer he drew up a new investment plan to reclaim more land and accelerate the pace of cultivation, he oversaw construction of more housing units for the workers, he started building a school for the growing number of children living on the property and he approved the drawings for the town church. Meanwhile, work on the main house proceeded speedily, and plans were now laid for a large park that was to extend from the fruit orchards behind the villa all the way to the small river that formed the eastern boundary of the property. Molinato was no longer just a big farming estate. It was growing into something different from anything Lucia had ever seen: a large, self-sufficient community centred around a functional, well-organised small town. For the first time she wondered whether Alvise’s dedication to his ambitious project was not also related to the precariousness of the world beyond it.

Bonaparte, meanwhile, consolidated his position in northern Italy. In rapid succession he deposed the Duke of Modena, Hercules III, occupied the Duchy of Reggio and formed a confederation of these two cities with Ferrara and Bologna, thus creating a French-controlled puppet state on the southern border of the Venetian Republic. His troops then marched on towards Rome and frightened Pope Pius VI into signing a peace treaty in which he agreed to yield cash, provisions and one hundred works of art from the Vatican collection. In the late summer and early autumn Bonaparte fought back a fresh Austrian offensive in Lombardy, gaining victories at Castiglione, Arcole and Rivoli. The fortress of Mantua, Austria’s last bastion in northern Italy, fell in February 1797.