Lucia - Andrea Di Robilant [119]
Lucia was still in Vicenza, completing a cycle of Paletta’s cure, but she returned to Milan to pay her court to Joséphine shortly after Princess Augusta’s successful delivery. The two had a lot of catching up to do. Joséphine told her about her quiet life at Malmaison, surrounded by her rare animals and her exotic plants. She saw little of the emperor, she said, but he occasionally made a surprise visit when he was in Paris. He was always kind to her and to her children, whom he loved as his own, and he wrote to her regularly. Joséphine asked after Lucia’s health, for Prince Eugène and Princess Augusta had informed her that she had not been well. Lucia told her about her medicine man and the mineral waters of Recoaro, adding that in truth the greatest cause of her suffering was being so far away from Alvisetto—she had even drawn up a secret plan to meet him halfway, in Lyon…Joséphine was a sympathetic listener, and in a moment of intimacy, Lucia mentioned the difficulties she was having with Alvise. There were times, she said, in which the tension was so high she thought she would not be able to stand it any more.
The latest incident had occurred over dinner the night before—Alvise was in town for a Senate session. Lucia’s stomach pains had given her a little trouble during the day so she had asked for some broth and a slice of bread. As she waited for the food to be served at the table, she began adding up a few figures on a piece of paper—small sums she owed—while Alvise started his usual litany against his mother. When he saw Lucia was not giving him her full attention, he blew his top. “I realise now that it was a mistake to appear so thoughtless [when he was talking about his mother],” Lucia conceded, “but my momentary distraction caused him to utter such awful words against me that I burst into tears. I continued to cry in silence for the rest of the meal…”52
By early winter, the news from Russia had become disheartening. “In just a few days, more than 30,000 horses perished from the cold,” Lucia reported to her sister in Venice, relaying whatever information she could pick up at court.
All our cavalry is now reduced to marching in the snow. There are no more mules to transport our artillery, and most pieces had to be abandoned or destroyed…Our men, whom nature has not made strong enough to face the challenges [of the Russian campaign], are struggling on, exhausted and utterly disheartened.53
Napoleon’s army suffered a devastating rout. The Italian contingent—27,000 men—was wiped out. Only a handful of officers and soldiers made it back home. Often Lucia’s reports were little more than lists of the dead and the missing: “Lauretta Mocenigo’s son died with a bullet in his chest…The young Widman boy is dead…The Giustinians have lost their child and are so crushed with grief they will not leave the house…Alemagna’s son has returned disfigured after losing his nose to frostbite…”54
It was the gloomiest winter in a long time. Lucia could not wait to leave Milan at the first signs of spring and join her son in Paris. Her health was on the mend. “My stomach has definitely recovered,” she assured Paolina in early March. “I am feeling well.” A few weeks later she announced that her “u-t-e-r-u-s is in good shape, exactly where it is meant to be.”55 There was nothing holding her back any more. She completed her duties at court at the end of March, and left for Paris in April with the intention of spending several months with Alvisetto, who was now thirteen—a young adolescent. She chose the road of the Simplon Pass because it was the quickest way to reach Paris, only to find the pass was still snowbound. The passage on sleds was hazardous and would have taken much too long. She turned