Lucia - Andrea Di Robilant [30]
During those summer evenings at Valdagno the talk often drifted to the extraordinary events taking place in Paris. France’s absolute monarchy had effectively collapsed after the storming of the Bastille and the establishment of the Convention to draft a constitution. Naturally, these dramatic developments were also at the centre of animated discussions back in Venice, where conservative patricians expressed their alarm while the more progressive-minded Venetians followed the beginnings of the French Revolution with the hope that the winds blowing from Paris might ultimately have a beneficial influence on the old Republic as well. Alvise, a devoted reader of Montesquieu, Diderot and Rousseau, kept Lucia abreast of the news. His comments on the situation unfolding in France were sympathetic but cautious—he was not a revolutionary, either by temperament or political conviction.
Lucia knew the discussions taking place in Venice made it more difficult for Alvise to journey out to Valdagno, but in her reveries she imagined him riding his carriage into the little town. Every jingling bell made her blood rush and her head turn. “My darling Alvise, it is so hard to be away from you! I cannot help feeling envious each time I see a married couple.” But as the summer wore on, the chances of luring him there grew increasingly remote. “Tomorrow an aerostatic balloon will lift off from our garden,” she announced as a last resort. “I don’t know what else to offer to encourage you to come…”31
The one thing that kept her spiritually connected with Alvise that summer at Valdagno were the books that he recommended to her. At his suggestion, she read La Nouvelle Héloïse, the epistolary novel by Jean-Jacques Rousseau published thirty years earlier yet still very popular. The book tells the story of two star-crossed lovers. In brief, Saint-Preux, a middle-class tutor, falls in love with Julie, his aristocratic pupil, who in turn falls in love with him. It is an impossible passion. Julie is promised to another man of her same station, whom she marries out of a sense of duty. Saint-Preux leaves on a long journey abroad, but eventually returns and is engaged as tutor of Julie’s children. Everyone seems content in this ménage. Beneath the surface, however, the echoes of the earlier passion still reverberate, and Julie realises, as her death nears, that she has never stopped loving Saint-Preux. “You can imagine how eager I am to read it after the description you gave me of the writer and the theme of the book,”32 Lucia wrote to Alvise as she delved into the thick 800-page tome.
There are many ways to read Rousseau’s classic novel. Tearful readers across Europe were certainly captivated by the sheer power of the passion between Saint-Preux and Julie, and the sexual tension underlying the book. And one can easily imagine Lucia in bed, propped up against her cushions, reading by candlelight into the night. Of course, unlike Julie she was in love with her husband. But she yearned to be loved back with the same intensity, whereas Alvise’s long absences left her unsteady—a feeling that was no doubt enhanced by the difficulty she was having in giving birth. “Please love me, Alvise,” she pleaded touchingly. “If only you knew how deep my feelings for you have reached inside my heart you would understand why I believe I have a right to demand equal love in return.”33
By the end of August, as the temperature finally cooled a little and the countryside around Valdagno took on a golden hue, Lucia realised that Alvise was not going to come out to see her. In her last letter from Casa Valle before returning to Venice she made no effort to conceal her disappointment:
I received your latest this evening: very nice letter, amusing, filled with interesting news, and I thank you. But how is it that there is not the slightest word about a visit here, nor do you mention the love you said you felt for me. Oh God, forgive me if I sound reproachful, but you surely realise that the thing I am most interested in is also