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By Root 764 0

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