Lucia - Andrea Di Robilant [69]
Two ships went up in flames and sank, including one which carried all the riches [Bonaparte] had seized in Malta. Only eight French ships managed to get away. But then the Turks massacred the French soldiers as they hit the shore, leaving 4,000 dead in the sand and 1,500 wounded. 7
With Bonaparte seemingly out of play, Alvise and Lucia became more certain that their future lay in the German-speaking Habsburg Empire. They even embarked on a German-language course. As Lucia explained to Paolina, “[German] will become increasingly necessary to us.”8 Alvise, though talented, showed a singular lack of patience with grammar and put in an average effort. Lucia took the lessons very seriously, but then she had an incentive to learn the language quickly.
At the end of September, nearly three months after she and Alvise had settled in Florence, Maximilian paid a secret visit to Lucia. Preparations were made through Paolina, who had become a fully fledged go-between in the affair. Lucia did not write directly to her lover, and those few notes she received from him she destroyed immediately. Her sister’s help was indispensable. It was through her that she sent Maximilian a detailed map of Florence—a copy of the one she used—in order to plan their meetings with the greatest possible accuracy. Lucia’s letters to Paolina hint in the vaguest terms that they managed to have a few perfect days to themselves—certainly nothing occurred during Maximilian’s stay in Florence to spoil their reunion, and it is possible Alvise was away on a work-related trip somewhere in the Tuscan countryside. In one letter Lucia wrote to Paolina, Maximilian added his own playful note:
It is from Florence, my dear lady, that I write to you but even as I begin to address you these few words, your sister is already pulling the pen away from my hand. I do want to tell you that I have never been happier…If Lucia were not reading these lines I would tell you all the wonderful things she says about you. Forgive this hurried scribble; and tell those adorable creatures of yours I detest them as I detest their mother. Adieu, Madame, someone next to me is forcing me to stop writing, otherwise I would fill all four sides…9
As the two lovers took walks in the public gardens and visited churches in search of art treasures, Lucia was seeing with new eyes many of the sites she had first discovered with Alvise back in 1786. They made a few purchases together—Florentine fans for Paolina and her two daughters, and a set of paper fish and a rod for the two boys. “The Colonel can teach them how to use the magnet attached to the hook,”10 Lucia reassured her sister. She added, rather mischievously, that she was showing off her German by whispering a few well-practised sentences to her lover. “But I beg you not to tell a soul about the German lessons I am taking,” she insisted, suddenly worried by the possibility that some malicious gossip back in Venice or Padua might draw a connection between her friendship with the colonel and her sudden enthusiasm for the German language. “I wouldn’t want people laughing behind my back.”11
Lucia’s happiness was suddenly eclipsed by the news she had long been dreading. Plunkett had kept it to himself all along, so as not to spoil their time together, but at the end of his stay in Florence he confessed that he had been given the command of the newly formed 60th Regiment based in Theresienstadt in Bohemia, and would soon be on his way to Austria to resume fighting the French.
“We shall be losing our worthy friend,”12 Lucia