Lucia - Andrea Di Robilant [100]
Despite Canova’s discouraging outlook, Lucia continued to pray for peace. Austria, she informed Paolina, was preparing three armies: one under the command of the emperor, with General Mack at his side, and the other two under the command of Archduke Charles and Archduke John. “They say that he who wants peace prepares for war. Let us hope this proverb will once more be proven true.”39
The following month, however, Napoleon ordered the bulk of the Grande Armée to redeploy from Boulogne to the Rhine. Austria and its Continental allies—Russia, Sweden and Naples—responded by forming a new grand coalition with Britain. As the storm gathered during the summer of 1805, Lucia and Alvisetto saw the city empty itself. Viennese society broke ranks, and all the great families retreated to country estates scattered about the Habsburg Empire. Only government officials and military officers remained in the capital, preparing the country for war. Lucia felt she had the city to herself. “I hadn’t been to the Prater in a long time,” she wrote to her sister after a night stroll under a full moon.
Alvisetto and I walked for hours. We then went over to the Ramparts, and were both so entranced by the beautiful light of the moon that we didn’t want to return home. It occurred to me that the same moon was shining over you; but, philosopher that you are, you probably did not even notice her. I pictured you in your room, the blinds closed, with only the light of your candle flickering around you.40
Lucia much preferred being in Vienna than in Margarethen. Her trips out to the country, while necessary to keep track of business accounts, became increasingly burdensome. The drainage system still did not work properly, and after every rain-shower the grounds around the house remained waterlogged for days, attracting clouds of mosquitoes. “How can we possibly have purchased such a dump?”41 she asked out of sheer exasperation after arriving at the property one day and finding the house in disorder and the garden so flooded she had trouble getting inside. On that same visit she discovered the caretaker had scabies. She had gone to the kitchen to prepare her usual pots of crème au chocolat and had asked the man to stir for her while she went to fetch a cooking implement. “When I returned, I took the wooden spoon from him: that’s when I realised. You know how I dread that disease.*16 The doctor came over and confirmed my suspicions; but the caretaker refused to be taken to the hospital…He asked to be let go, and I immediately said yes.”42
At Margarethen, Lucia was seldom in the mood to appreciate even the sounds of nature. “The toads delight us with their croaking harmonies—the only recognisable noise around here,” she sneered. “That, and the hissing of bats.” A nightingale in the pheasantry had given her pleasure in the early part of summer. “But now the pheasantry is flooded and the bird has flown away.”43
Having given up hope of ever cultivating safflower in the swampy fields of Margarethen, she developed a new passion: Prunus cerasus, the lovely cherry tree she had originally seen cascading down the banks of the Elbe during her first summer in Austria. She now planted row upon row of Twieselbeerbaum†17 around the house; she pored over German agricultural almanacs to learn all there was to learn about this particular cherry tree; and she spent hours translating the abstruse technical texts into Italian. “It’s a good way to improve my German,” she remarked. This was the fifth summer in a row she was spending in the “dump,” away from her husband.
The growing noises of war soon caught up with her in the country. One day, in mid July, Alvisetto’s German instructor came back from his walk to the village and announced that recruiting officers had arrived. “I’d rather not have to witness