Lucia - Andrea Di Robilant [47]
Bravo! Hurrah! So, my dear sister, you have happily delivered and those few lines you sent me gave me infinite pleasure because it means you are in good health. I am so happy! I hug you with all my heart, and my two nieces as well. I so much want to see the first-born again, and the second one, who bears our mother’s name, I will love her so.35
Of course, Paolina’s husband, Luigi, was hoping for a son, an expectation Lucia well understood given the pressure she herself had felt from the Mocenigos. “I too was wishing for a little boy,” she wrote to her brother-in-law in a consolatory postscript, “but my prayers will not be useless and you will soon have one, I am sure.”
Lucia was so caught up in the emotional turmoil surrounding Paolina’s delivery that she had managed to put aside momentarily the fears about her own pregnancy. They came back to her even more strongly now that she was next in line. “I must tell you what scares me most as my own delivery approaches,” she confessed to her sister. “It is the awful pain I will have to endure: it terrifies me. And I know what a coward I can be in such a situation.”36 Her fear was compounded by the possibility that Doctor Vespa might not actually be at her side when the time came. After passing by to see her every day for months, he was now telling her that since the empress was also entering the last phase of her pregnancy, he would be on call at all times.
Lucia had seen the imperial carriage passing below her window just a few days before, when the empress had arrived from the country to spend the last part of her pregnancy in Vienna. “I actually enjoyed the splendid spectacle,” she told Paolina. “The cortège passed right in front of our house, followed by parents and friends and twenty-four postilions. The streets and windows were crowded with people. Everyone applauded and shouted hurrahs. The trumpets blared. It was all very beautiful and moving.” Still, Lucia was “immensely distressed” at the possibility of not being able to count on Doctor Vespa when she delivered. And the outlook was not encouraging. “Just yesterday the Empress told Vespa she had been on the point of calling him the night before. She’d woken up with terrible pains that had forced her to get out of bed and walk up and down the room, though luckily the pain had subsided.” Next day, Lucia added with a touch of irritation, the empress felt so much better “she went off to the theatre in an excellent mood.”37
The Viennese custom, at a time of mourning, required one to wear white in lieu of black after the first six weeks, except for a black veil over one’s head. Lucia consented to change her attire with the greatest reluctance. “Our loss has been so devastating,” she told her sister, “that I would like my outward appearance to continue expressing my sadness.”38 In her mind, the death of her father was still so indissolubly bound with the birth of her child that she even feared her enduring grief might somehow affect the newborn. She was afraid of pain, but more than anything else she was afraid of giving birth to a weak or diseased child. “I would be utterly crushed if, albeit for a noble reason, the creature I shall soon give birth to were unhealthy.” And she revealed to Paolina “that right after our terrible misfortune, I felt the baby trembling as he moved inside me. I hope to God my baby will not have to live in agony.”39
The regular post left once a week, but Lucia made a point of writing every day, often picking up the letter where she had left it the night before, in order to give her sister a precise account of what she was going through. She registered every movement of the child, checked her nipples for more traces of serum, took down Doctor Vespa’s latest advice—when he came to see her. Everything was ready; it was just a matter of waiting with Alvise at her side. “I begin my letter to you today,” she wrote to Paolina on 9 April, “even though I might have to interrupt at any moment. Now is when it should all be happening if the counting has been exact. But I haven