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to manage the trip, providing meals and lodgings along the way. There was still a little cash left for one last shopping spree. Socks, shoes, shirts, fabrics, dried foods: Venice had been under siege for six months and Lucia had heard there still was a penury of the most basic goods. She longed to be home. “I can’t wait to sleep in my own room,” she told Paolina, “though I fear there will be many rats as the apartment has been empty for so long. Make sure that proper stops are put into cracks and holes.” As much as she loved Paris, she felt the constant pull of her Venetian roots. “This is a great city but I prefer the one I was born in, and I hope to spend the few years of life I still have surrounded by our beloved lagoons.”55

In the midst of last-minute preparations, Lucia received a call from the foreign ministry: though very busy preparing for the Congress of Vienna, Talleyrand was willing to see Lucia for a petit quart d’heure d’entretien, the note said—a brief fifteen-minute interview. Two elderly generals were already sitting in the waiting room when she arrived. A few minutes later, they were joined by the Prince de Rohan, a wrinkled gentleman from the oldest house of Brittany, who engaged Lucia in amiable chit-chat—his daughter had apparently been escorted by a Mocenigo in Venice at the time of the Republic—until it was her turn to go in. Talleyrand was polite but distant, and he made it plain he was a very busy man. Right away Lucia asked him how he thought Venice should proceed in its petition to obtain the papers belonging to the Republic, which, she added pointedly, “I know to be in France.”

Talleyrand:

Ah, but when Venice and Milan were joined [in the Kingdom of Italy] the papers were assigned to Milan.

Lucia:

Sir, I saw them in the archives here in Paris.

Talleyrand:

Well, they are merely in consignment.

Lucia:

But they are here…

Talleyrand:

In consignment…

Lucia:

May I at least put in a petition to retrieve the papers?

Talleyrand:

They belong to Milan, and since they are here only in consignment it really is not possible to do so. Milan belongs to Vienna now.

Lucia:

So Venice should eventually make the request to Vienna?

Talleyrand:

Everything to Vienna…(Changing subject) Your father must have known [French ambassador] Choiseul Gouffier in Constantinople…

Lucia:

He might, though I remember he was there at the time of [Ambassador] Saint Priest…

Talleyrand:

Of course, Saint Priest…56

The old diplomat had steered the conversation on to a dead track. Lucia’s fifteen minutes were up. “I realised he wanted me to take my leave, so I left.” She walked home feeling low and decided to make a detour to see if Alvisetto was still in the park. The sight of her gangly teenage son chasing the ball like a little boy put her in better spirits. The evening was warm and they tarried under the great leafy chestnuts, going over their latest sales, adding up figures and looking ahead to their long journey back to Venice. Later she wrote to her sister that on the way home from the Jardin du Luxembourg, Alvisetto gave her his arm for the first time.

The apartment was bursting with boxes and crates and trunks. All was ready. Lucia made her farewell rounds: Madame Sérurier, Madame Baraguey d’Hilliers, Madame Chateaubriand, Madame de Genlis, who gave her the four-volume biography of Henry IV. And then, of course, her new professor friends: Saint Hilaire, Laugier, Havy…Professor Des Fontaines came to rue de l’Estrapade to present Lucia with her well-earned certificate of botanical studies. He too gave her a book as a parting present: Le Jeune Botaniste, by Auguste Plée. An indispensable read, he said with emotion, for any aspiring botanist.

On 24 August, she took her leave from the king. “I was in such a rush I had to change in the carriage,” reads the last entry in Lucia’s Paris diary.

He seemed pleased to see me when I came up to him and curtsied. He said: “I thought you had left already. How are you?” I replied cheekily: “I would not have left before your saint’s day.” And