Lucia - Andrea Di Robilant [50]
She was returning to Venice victorious. Her station in society was secure; her rank among her peers considerable. As she pictured herself settling once more at Palazzo Mocenigo, some of the old anxiety came back to her as she worried about the numerous relations living there—many of them quite old and doddering—reacting with impatience to Alvisetto’s shrieks and wailings. But her mother-in-law reassured her on that count: “My grandson’s loud music will never be unpleasant. It has been a very long time since such a comforting sound was heard in Ca’ Mocenigo.”47
Alvise and Lucia did not arrive in Venice until mid July, after a much longer and rougher journey than expected. The weather was unseasonably cold and the skies were stormy most of the way. It even snowed as they crossed the Alps. Apart from the general discomfort—the constant rattle, the banging on the hard wood—Lucia hardly had time to enjoy the scenery, what with having to breastfeed Alvisetto and nurse him to sleep as their carriage climbed up and down the mountains. By the time they reached Palazzo Mocenigo Lucia was sore, exhausted and sleepless. The absence of her father threw her into deep melancholy, which the sight of Paolina and her two daughters, Cattina and little Isabella, only partially assuaged. She was ordered to bed and the Mocenigo doctors gathered around her prescribing the usual cycle of bleedings. But Lucia feared this perfunctory, all-purpose remedy might reduce the quality of her milk if not even diminish it. Her mother-in-law hovered over her protectively, insisting she follow the house-doctors’ advice. “It would be most useful if you had the vein of your arm punctured in order to extract a good four ounces of blood,” she advised. As for the milk, Lucia need not worry. “If the blood is taken out while you are breastfeeding, then there is no danger of reducing the quantity of milk you have.”48 Lucia knew there was nothing wrong with her. She was just very tired. All that useless fretting made her feel a stranger in her own house again. She missed Vienna. Above all, she missed the comforting presence of Doctor Vespa.
In only a year the atmosphere had changed noticeably in Venice. All of Europe was at war now, and though the Venetian Republic still clung to its proud neutrality it was slowly being sucked into the vortex unleashed by the French Revolution. Great Britain, Spain and Piedmont had joined the Austro-Prussian coalition, which was routing French forces north, east and south. The French government was also defending itself from a bloody insurgency in the region of Vendée. It looked as if the Revolution were hopelessly besieged. Even the legendary General Dumouriez, the hero of the battle of Valmy, had quarrelled with the politicians at the Convention and had gone over to the enemy. The Jacobins had taken effective control in Paris, expelling the moderate Girondins from the Convention and establishing a Committee of Public Safety, a de facto dictatorship led by Maximilien-François Robespierre, that dragged the country deeper into a spiral of state violence and terror. By the time Lucia arrived in Venice in July, the grisly tales coming from Paris were suddenly brought into focus with the news that Queen Marie Antoinette had not been spared the guillotine. Hundreds if not thousands of French émigrés were roaming northern Italy now in search of a safe haven, and many of them had settled in Venetian territory. Chief among them was Louis XVI’s brother, the Comte de Provence, second in line to the throne after the dauphin, the young Louis.
The war was having a profound effect on the political climate in Venice. The Council of Ten tightened its grip and made all decisions largely ignoring the Senate. The State Inquisitors expanded their role in an atmosphere of suspicion and fear. Alvise, who had been on leave to be with Lucia in Vienna, was eager to get back into the political game. He was alarmed by the reactionary turn the government had taken and blamed the old, conservative patricians for seeking cover in the face of