Lucia - Andrea Di Robilant [29]
Alvise emerged from the 1789 election with his prestige unscathed by his father’s debacle. Indeed, he was now regarded as the de facto head of the family, if not formally, at least from a political standpoint. Not yet thirty, he was a player to be reckoned with. His speeches at the Senate had enhanced his reputation as an able and even inspiring young politician. Inevitably, his increased responsibilities—both on the family front and the public one—weighed on his relationship with Lucia. But she was fast learning the rules of the game. She was, after all, the daughter of one of the most respected statesmen in Venice, and she had experienced first-hand the demands a political career placed on the family. “I console myself with the thought that you are happy to stay long hours at the Senate,” she assured Alvise without a trace of irony, “since you have a real love for the affairs of your fatherland.”27
Lucia, meanwhile, worried about fulfilling her own task. To improve the chances of a successful pregnancy, Alvise thought it would be useful for Lucia to continue the water cures she had begun in Lucca during their trip to Tuscany. He sent her to spend the summer in Valdagno, a fashionable little town north of Vicenza, at the foot of the Alps. Valdagno was set in a region Lucia remembered well from her childhood summers. When her father was away in Constantinople, she spent the hottest months with her mother at Castel Gomberto, the country estate five miles down the road from Valdagno that belonged to her mother’s family, the Piovene. Castel Gomberto was a handsome neo-Palladian villa with a formal garden, a long rectangular fishpond and a huge elm tree that provided a refreshing shade in July and August. It was a warm, friendly house, filled with sweet memories of her mother. Thus Lucia’s dread of being separated again from Alvise for weeks at a time during her stay in Valdagno was mitigated by the prospect of frequent visits to Castel Gomberto to be with her Piovene uncles and aunts.
Lucia took rooms at the Casa Valle, a comfortable house in the main square of Valdagno, with a fenced-in rose garden in the back whence a path led directly to a little house at the source of the curative waters. Lucia’s days revolved around the schedule that had been arranged for her by the local doctor to fortify her body in order to carry her next pregnancy to its conclusion. “My health is good,” she dutifully reported to Alvise after settling in. “The water cure is following its course and the doctor seems pleased.”28
In the afternoons, when she did not ride a carriage to Castel Gomberto, she explored the trails in neighbouring woods, taking walks, she wrote to Alvise, “which I cannot wait to show you.”29 Occasionally, a football game was organised in the town square to amuse the summer residents or a travelling theatre company might put on a show. The surrounding mountains were known for the great variety of their mineral ores. They attracted geologists and amateur collectors of rocks and gems from inside the Venetian Republic and abroad, and the mineral collections on display in several curiosity shops were the principal attractions in Valdagno. In the evenings, visitors came by Casa Valle to exchange niceties, and brought a bouquet of freshly cut flowers, a plate of figs or perhaps a basket of mushrooms from the nearby woods. Lucia often put together a round of tombola, her favourite society game, though “I lose most of the time,” she complained to her husband, “without even the comfort of hearing you