Lucia - Andrea Di Robilant [109]
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,