Lucia - Andrea Di Robilant [126]
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
Napoleon 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