Lucia - Andrea Di Robilant [129]
On her way home from the Jardin des Plantes, on the last day of Carnival, Lucia walked over to the boulevards hoping to see the masked revellers rushing by in open carriages—she thought it might remind her of the Venice carnival. But she only caught sight of a single cabriolet carrying three masked passengers, “and I heard they were paid by the police to display a little good humour.” That night, breaking her stay-at-home routine, she went to the masked ball at court in Saint Cloud. “I stayed until two,” she jotted down later. “The ladies wore a domino [cloak], the men wore tails. There were not many people at all.”29 Coming home she passed by the Barrière du Trone, one of the main Paris gateways into the city. “Sixteen cannons have been placed in addition to the usual two. I also counted fourteen ammunition carts.”30
She wondered whether Napoleon was already making preparations to defend the city.
Her visits to Joséphine were the one regular social engagement Lucia did not give up in the winter of 1814. At least once a week, she had Checco hire or borrow a horse, harness the gig and take her out to Malmaison. The empress often looked weak and she tired very quickly. One day—it was early February and the grounds were covered with snow—Lucia went over for dinner and they played their usual game of Boston. They talked about the terrible situation in Italy: there were uprisings in Milan and Joséphine worried about what might happen to Prince Eugène, his wife and the children, and whether they might make it safely back to Paris. She also asked after Alvisetto and was sorry to hear about his difficulties in school. She told Lucia to bring him with her on her next visit.
The following Sunday, Lucia and Alvisetto went to Malmaison for lunch. Queen Hortense’s children were also there and he played with them in the afternoon. The sun came out and Lucia took a short walk with Joséphine, but after a few minutes the empress was exhausted and they made their way back. A week later, Lucia went back alone: “She was unwell and received me in her beautiful bedroom. She was lying on the muslin bedspread and had drawn a white silk blanket over her, with gold braids and frills. The window curtains were also drawn.”31
Lucia did not return to Malmaison until a fortnight later, when she was received by the principal lady-in-waiting and the chamberlain: Joséphine’s breathing difficulties had apparently worsened and she was not seeing anyone. On the way home, Lucia and Checco were caught in “a column of twenty to twenty-five carts carrying wounded soldiers and headed for Saint Germain.”32 The rumour was that the French army was falling back on Paris and that the final battle might take place just outside the city.
That night—the night of 29 March—Lucia was kept awake by the constant beating of drums as Napoleon’s troops entered Paris and marched through Faubourg Saint Germain and then headed south, in the direction of Fontainebleau. Around half past three in the morning, Alvisetto came into her room sleepy-eyed, asking what was the matter. He settled by the windowsill until dawn, watching the exhausted, poorly clad soldiers marching down the street.
The allied armies had by then reached the eastern city limits. Only days before, Austria, Russia, Prussia and Great Britain had signed the Treaty of Chaumont which bound them to fight on until the final overthrow of Napoleon. Even at this hopeless hour, the emperor was convinced he could outmanoeuvre the much stronger enemy by moving south and east, to Fontainebleau, and attack the allies from the rear. But while he laid out his military strategy, Talleyrand, the wily survivor of so many political seasons, was again taking charge of France’s destiny, secretly negotiating with the enemy to save Paris from an allied attack and prepare the ground for the emperor’s deposition.
At seven in the morning, Lucia left the house in rue de l’Estrapade with Alvisetto