Lucia - Andrea Di Robilant [52]
The Veronese quickly realised Alvise was very different from his father. He certainly seems to have cut quite a figure in his own right in the somewhat provincial atmosphere of local society, the ladies in particular perking up in his presence, perhaps encouraged by Lucia’s prolonged absence. He formed several liaisons, none of them of any lasting importance. In fact, every trace of them would probably have disappeared had it not been for Alvise’s persistent neglect in destroying the evidence of his secret affairs. Thus one learns of the anonymous wife of a government official who confessed to him she stared “all day at your miniature portrait, isolated in my usual, rigid solitude.” Or of the equally mysterious but rather more sanguine Spanish lady who warned Alvise to keep his wandering eye in check “because in matters of gallantry, women of my naciòn do not care for the company of other ladies.”49 Verona, of course, was the city of Romeo and Juliet, but the tone of these letters to Alvise was hardly Shakespearian. It was more like vaudeville in the Venetian province.
His romantic entanglements did not distract Alvise from his official work. From the start he faced a tricky diplomatic controversy with France. Louis XVI’s young brother, the Comte de Provence, having failed to obtain a safe passage to Vienna, had fled from Paris and established his headquarters in Verona of all places, where he was attracting an increasing number of French émigrés.*8 The revolutionary government in Paris was pressing Venice for his expulsion. Alvise’s instructions were to mark time using whatever delaying tactic he could come up with. There was no legal ground for the Comte de Provence’s expulsion: he led a relatively dignified life in Verona, and the Venetian Republic was a neutral party in the war. Alvise remained on very cordial terms with him: as long as the anti-French conservative European alliance was forcing France on the defensive, there was no need to rush to comply with the request of the revolutionary government in Paris.
Lucia moved to Verona in the spring of 1794. Alvisetto was now a year old and it would have been difficult to postpone her trip any longer without appearing to snub the Veronese. She was reluctant to leave all the same. Her baby boy was neither strong nor particularly healthy. He was prone to catarrh, colds and fevers that kept Lucia in a state of perpetual worry. She wondered whether they had left Vienna too soon. She complained about the humid climate in Venice. She even asked herself if something might be wrong with her milk. The Mocenigos, meanwhile, observed Alvisetto with creeping scepticism, some relatives even beginning to make unpleasant remarks about “Memmo blood” after having praised that very same blood only a year before. Even Chiara, always very protective of her grandson, admitted he was a weak child. “The truth is,” she told Lucia shortly before their departure for Verona, “I shall remain in anguish until he has grown a little more, especially every time you set off on a journey.”50
In Verona, Alvisetto seemed to get stronger as the days grew warmer. Lucia still nursed him and was never far away from him. She would have liked to take advantage of the pleasant weather and parade him in the lively marketplace in piazzale delle erbe, or visit the square in front of the Roman arena, where the Veronese took their afternoon stroll, or walk along the banks of the Adige, its icy cold water rushing from the snows of the Dolomites towards the Adriatic Sea. But of course the wife of the captain was not free to move about as she pleased; as the first lady of Verona, Lucia was forced to follow a fairly rigid protocol and she felt a prisoner within the grey walls of the Palazzo del Capitano. The view from her apartment was cut off to the right by the Torre Lamberti, the 300-foot-high medieval tower that had served for centuries as Verona’s trusty sentinel, and to her left by the gothic spires