Lucia - Andrea Di Robilant [67]
Maximilian had an unusual background. He came from a prominent Irish family of soldiers, many of whom had emigrated to the Continent over the previous 200 years—at the end of the eighteenth century there were Plunkett officers in both the Austrian and the French armies. Maximilian’s father, Thomas Plunkett, had joined the Austrian army as a young man, quickly rising through the ranks to become one of Empress Maria Theresa’s favourite generals. His mother, Mary D’Alton, also came from a well-known family of Irish soldiers. Maximilian, one of nine brothers and sisters, was born in Linz in 1768. He was ten years old when his father died. Yet a career in the Austrian army was never in doubt. Still a teenager, he joined the 20th Infantry and went off to fight the Turks in the Ukraine. After the French Revolution, he was transferred to the western front, along the Rhine, and was badly wounded in the battle of Mainz. Promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel, he took command of the 45th Infantry and joined Wallis’s occupation force in Italy.
The company of Lucia and Paolina gave Maximilian a welcome respite from his life at the military camp. He delighted in their bright conversation and bonded easily with both of them. They formed an unconventional trio; when they were not spending the evening at the Wallis residence, they were happy to stroll together down the main street in Padua, look into curiosity shops or savour ices at one of the cafés. Lucia absorbed Maximilian’s energy. She felt alive again, eager to be part of the world around her. She had not felt such longing since the death of her son three years earlier, and a sense of gratitude enhanced her admiration for Maximilian. Paolina’s presence did not inhibit her: on the contrary, it gave her the strength she needed to embrace her feelings.
Lucia and Maximilian fell in love in the spring of 1798 under the wary gaze of General Wallis and the more benevolent one of Madame Wallis. As a token of her affection, she gave the colonel, as she often called him, a cluster of decorative cordons and tassels she had secretly embroidered during the winter, with which to embellish the flag of his regiment—a gift which moved him deeply, and endeared her to his officers, who wrote her an enthusiastic “thank you” note. Evidently the relationship was widely known about in Austrian circles.
From the beginning of his assignment in Italy, General Wallis had felt it was in everyone’s interest to send Alvise abroad for a while, ostensibly to mark Vienna’s displeasure at his earlier ties to the French but really more to remove him from a hostile environment. Lucia and Maximilian’s burgeoning relationship may have encouraged the general to speed up the paperwork. In June he issued passports for Alvise and Lucia “to take the waters”2 in Tuscany. It is unclear how much Alvise knew at the time about his wife’s romantic involvement—he was seldom in Padua and only for brief stop-overs. In any case, he seemed glad to leave for he was tired of living as a pariah in his own homeland. A period of exile in Tuscany was sure to turn into a useful experience. It would allow him to observe up-close the progress of agriculture in Tuscany and to borrow ideas with which to improve productivity on his own estates.
Lucia was desperate at having to separate herself from the man she was just beginning to love. She was not even sure she would ever see Maximilian again. What if his regiment were transferred before she came back? What he if he had to go back to the front? How would they keep in touch? As a parting gift, Maximilian gave her a lovely writing set—a small inkwell and a quill made of finely blown glass from Murano. But how safe would it be to write to him?
The Grand Duchy of Tuscany was as pleasant a land of exile as Alvise