Lucia (32 page)

Her most touching encounter in Madame de Genlis’s salon was with Dominique Vivant Denon, the artist, archaeologist and art connoisseur who had made his name in Egypt with Napoleon and was now the powerful director of the Louvre. Denon had been a close friend of Lucia’s father back in the 1790s in Venice, and when Andrea Memmo was confined to bed by his illness, he had come by every day to sit with him and give him the comfort of good conversation. At the time, Lucia’s difficult pregnancy was keeping her in Vienna, away from her dying father, and she always harboured a feeling of gratitude towards the young Frenchman who had kept him company until the end. Twenty years later, Lucia finally had a chance to meet Denon—the man everyone knew as “the Eye of Napoleon.” He welcomed Lucia warmly into his house-cum-museum, and gave her a tour of his cabinet, a treasure trove of “Egyptian objects, paintings, drawings, bronze sculptures, porcelains and even Indian furniture” that he had gathered during his travels.
¹²
Of course, Lucia was not unaware that Denon was Napoleon’s principal adviser in the looting of artworks across Europe, most of which adorned the rooms of the Louvre. It was probably for the sake of her father’s memory that she chose not to dwell on this point—there is not a critical word about Denon in her diary or in her letters, even though she felt strongly about the issue of stolen art; especially art stolen in Venice.

It was Denon who introduced Lucia to David, her neighbour across the street and the most celebrated artist of his age. He had always been famous, as far as she could remember. In fact he was already famous back in the 1780s, when Angelica Kauffmann used to take her around to the ateliers of the major painters in Rome. Now he was Napoleon’s favourite artist, and had put his stark, neoclassical imprint on the aesthetics of the Empire. At the age of sixty-five, he was still working on a majestic scale. When Lucia went to see him at his studio, she was completely overwhelmed by the powerful painting he was completing, which was bursting with naked soldiers preparing for battle. She recognised the famous scene from antiquity: Leonidas and his 300 Spartans on their way to meet the Persian army at Thermopylae. Strong Leonidas, the saviour of Greece, stood among his men, sword drawn, staring straight into Lucia’s eyes. She wondered whether the artist was drawing a parallel between Leonidas and Napoleon. France’s system of alliances had come unhinged after the disastrous Russian campaign and the Empire was under threat everywhere in Europe. Was Napoleon, like the bearded Leonidas, the heroic defender of civilisation against the advance of the barbarians?

L
ucia had never felt so free to organise her life as she did in the late spring of 1813, after settling in her Paris apartment. The combination of her independence and her exposure to so many people of talent energised her; at the age of forty-three she yearned to engage her mind more fruitfully. Conversations in prominent salons, however agreeable and stimulating, no longer seemed enough. She was attracted by the rigour that only an academic community could provide, and she eventually found what she was looking for at the Jardin des Plantes, the botanical gardens where many of the great French scientists gave public lectures.

It all started quite by chance. One afternoon, Lucia went to the Collège Duplessix to hear Jean Charles de Lacretelle, a renowned historian of the French Revolution, only to be turned away by an unpleasant clerk who told her the lecture was “for men only.” Instead of going home in a huff, she walked over to the nearby Jardin des Plantes, where women were evidently welcome. She heard Geoffroy de Saint Hilaire, an eminent zoologist, give a fascinating talk on quadrupeds. Lucia was hooked. Soon she was attending Saint Hilaire’s courses on fish, butterflies, shells and corals. Next, she enrolled in Jean-Baptiste Lamarck’s course on invertebrates, learning all she could possibly want to know about molluscs and giant squids. Professor Havy introduced her to mineralogy, and Professor Des Fontaines to botany. She became an assiduous and attentive student, took copious notes and revised every evening at home, while Alvisetto struggled with his homework.

Lucia chose not to share this part of her life with Paolina—there is no mention of lectures in her letters to her sister. It is hard to understand why she was secretive about an experience that was obviously so important to her, especially with her sister, whom she usually kept informed about every detail of her life, down to her bodily functions. But she evidently felt protective about this new development. In reading her brief diary entries, one senses a coyness about the whole enterprise of a late education, as if she did not want people to know about it back in Italy because she feared their condescending remarks.

By mid summer, Lucia was a familiar figure at the Jardin des Plantes, hurrying to her lectures, staying on after class to make a query or ask for some clarification, fetching a sample in the herb garden or checking the mushroom beds in the dank underground cellars. Professor Havy grew so fond of her he gave her a small collection of his quartzes. Professor Des Fontaines took her for educational walks in the garden, pointing out the most exotic trees and telling her their history. Professor Saint Hilaire called on her to assist him each time a shipment of specimens—reptiles, butterflies, insects—arrived from the Americas.

Every morning Lucia took Alvisetto to early mass, saw him off to school, then headed to the Jardin des Plantes following the banks of the Seine. She had given up her carriage soon after arriving in Paris to reduce her running costs, and she actually enjoyed the long walks along the river. In the afternoon, on her way back, she took the habit of stopping at the flower market to pick up some buttercups and bluebells, and popping into Félix’s, her favourite
pâtisserie,
to buy a small pastry or two. On those rare occasions when she headed home earlier than usual, she idled in the streets of Faubourg Saint Germain, gathering along the way the most eclectic collection of goods: a set of drawing pencils, for example, or a
sou
of nails, a set of candles, a pair of socks, a couple of pigeons to roast for dinner, some bottled water and always a good supply of dried figs and prunes to help her bowel movements.

She occasionally broke her routine in the city with a day-trip to the porcelain factories at Sèvres, or to Montmorency—she picnicked under the great chestnut tree where Jean-Jacques Rousseau used to take his meals. “They say it is 500 years old,” she noted in her diary. “The trunk is so large it takes four men to wrap themselves around it.”
¹³
She spent a sunny day at Versailles, inspecting the restoration work on the palace, which had been devastated during the Revolution. She wandered over to Marie Antoinette’s Petit Trianon, also entirely restored. An old Swiss guard, in his harlequin-like uniform, appeared from nowhere and offered to take her around. It was getting late, but Lucia followed her kindly guide through the royal apartments, then out in the gardens. “He took me to the grotto, the garden theatre, the wood full of tall, leafy trees; finally we reached the make-believe farming village.” Lucia had heard so many descriptions of the Petit Trianon and the surrounding grounds, including Marie Antoinette’s whimsical “village,” that her visit took on a dreamy quality. The melancholy Swiss guard had come to France with Marie Antoinette in 1770 and had miraculously survived the years of turmoil. Having nowhere to go, he had stayed on as the unofficial custodian of the Petit Trianon, keeping the queen’s memory alive with little anecdotes and recollections he shared with visitors.

At the end of the tour, Lucia saw the old man fade in the gloaming as mysteriously as he had appeared. “It was a beautiful night,” she wrote in her diary, “and I made my way back [to the town of Versailles] by the light of the moon.”
¹⁴

L
ucia could not remember feeling so at peace with herself as she felt in that summer of 1813. “I sleep well,” she assured Paolina, “and my friends say I’ve even put on weight. I have a pleasing complexion and I feel good.”
¹⁵
She only wished Alvisetto were more diligent in his studies, and more engaged in his spiritual life. “Oh, the boy has a good heart, and he does his prayers, and confesses, and takes communion, and that is all very well but it is not enough,” she complained to her sister. She found his attitude towards religion to be too perfunctory. “Devotion to the Creator needs a great deal of work, but [Alvisetto] lacks the necessary spiritual nourishment, and I worry that when he will reach the age of overwhelming passions he will not have the strength to hold on to his faith.”
¹⁶

Father Laboudrie, his confessor, was having a hard time with Alvisetto as well. He did not find it easy to absolve him from his sins and allowed him to take communion only after serious penance—he was made to read for eight or fifteen days in a row, depending on the gravity of his sins, from the
Imitation of Christ
of Thomas à Kempis. But from what we can guess, Alvisetto’s sins could not have been that terrible. They probably ranged from needling poor Vérand to doing sloppy homework.

At the end of the summer, Alvisetto faced his final examinations at the Lycée. Lucia suggested he pray for the intercession of Saint Ignatius “since his Jesuit schools were the best ever”
¹⁷
but her son cheekily replied he had already done so on his own initiative. For his French essay, the mighty
dissertation,
Alvisetto was asked to draw “a comparison between a wounded soldier who devotes his last thoughts to his beloved general, and a man devoted to God, who willingly submits himself to a preordained destiny.” Alvisetto was not inspired. “He turned in a poor composition because he did not understand the question properly,” Lucia noted with annoyance.
¹⁸
Saint Ignatius had not come to the boy’s rescue after all, leaving her to wonder whether he had, in fact, prayed to the great Jesuit scholar.

Alvisetto’s teachers showed unexpected mercy despite his poor showing in French, and allowed him to pass to the next grade,
troisième.
The school year started in early October, after a short break, and Lucia enlisted the help of the assiduous and ever-present Father Laboudrie to make sure his new teachers were not anti-clerical hangovers from the period of the Revolution. “They don’t have to be zealous Catholics,” she explained. “I just want to make sure that when they speak of religion, or things related to religion, they do so with respect.” Father Laboudrie assured her that Alvisetto’s principal teachers were “very pious.”
¹⁹

Lucia had not planned to remain in Paris another full academic year, but Alvise urged her to stay on because travelling to Italy was risky. In August 1813, even Austria, France’s main ally, had declared war against her, immediately heading south to recover its Italian provinces. Prince Eugène was in no position to defend the Kingdom of Italy: after the Russian campaign, it had become very hard to enlist new conscripts, and what little remained of the Armée d’Italie was ridden with desertions. He had retreated to the enclave of Mantua, leaving the enemy to advance unopposed into northern Italy. The Austrians had taken Trieste, gaining access to the Adriatic, and by October, just as Alvisetto was starting his school year, they lay siege to Venice.

Alvise, meanwhile, was stuck in Milan: the Senate was back in session, though nobody knew for how long. He was also cut off from his estates, now under Austrian control, and could no longer draw an income from them. As he explained to Lucia, once he went through the savings in his account in Milan, he would not be able to send her money in Paris. “My advice to you is that you should stay where you are,” he wrote. “I must also impress upon you the need to make only the most necessary expenses from now on.”
²⁰

N
apoleon came back to Paris for a few days in October, preparing to lead his tired army into yet another battle. Lucia went to court at Saint Cloud to be introduced to the emperor as lady-in-waiting to his stepson’s wife. When she was finally ushered before him, she found him slouching in his throne, looking listless and overweight. He perked up just a little when Lucia’s name was read out. “Ah, a Venetian lady,”
²¹
he said, as if trying to summon some vague memory from the misty past. He said a few words in Italian to her before his gaze drifted again.

The emperor left town some days later. Lucia was at Malmaison, playing a game of Boston with Joséphine, when the news arrived that the Grande Armée had been torn to pieces at the battle of Leipzig by the coalition forces of Austria, Prussia, Russia and Sweden. Joséphine had stayed in bed late and had not come down until after lunch. She looked tired, Lucia noticed, and was hardly able to concentrate on her game.

In November the weather turned cold and windy. Lucia asked Monsieur Minier to put in shutters to stop the constant rattling and the icy draughts. He answered she would have to pay half the costs or else sign a longer lease. Lucia declined both offers: she was already short of money, and she could no longer count on regular remittances from Italy. Besides, it was not clear how long she would be staying in Paris and it made no sense to commit herself to a long lease just to get some shutters on the wall. She decided to look for another apartment. During the next four weeks she scoured the Faubourg Saint Germain, checking out leads, climbing up hundreds of stairs, visiting apartments that were either too dark or too small, too dirty or too expensive. She visited everything there was to rent around Place de la Sorbonne, rue de Vaugirard, rue de l’Enfer and rue de Sainte Geneviève—nearly thirty apartments according to her count—before she found suitable lodgings at number 13, rue de l’Estrapade, next to the church of Sainte Geneviève. It was a sunny, comfortable second-floor apartment. More importantly: there were shutters at the windows. The owners lived downstairs;
madame
did the washing for a fee, and prepared excellent meals that could be brought upstairs. The apartment came with stables, which Lucia did not need but might sublet to friends who had horses, and a small coach-house where she could park her
bastardella,
the old gig Checco had brought from Italy and which they used to drive out to Malmaison, when they could borrow a horse.