Lucia - Andrea Di Robilant [85]
Sunday we have an assembly at Count Colloredo’s, Monday a soirée at Countess Lasranski’s, Tuesday an assembly at Count Trautsmandorff ’s, followed by a coterie at Countess Cageneck’s, Wednesday an assembly at the Cobentzels’, Thursday an assembly at Countess Lasranski’s, Friday a soirée at the Cobentzels’, Saturday an assembly at Countess Kollowrath’s, Sunday a dinner at Charles Zichy’s…Next week Duke Albert [of Saxony-Teschen] is giving a ball, and Alvise insisted I buy a new dress for the occasion. Forty sequins!27
For the first time Alvise and Lucia hosted their own social events as well. The week before Christmas they held an assembly starting around nine o’clock in the evening, after the theatre. Over 300 guests filled their apartment, drinking champagne and picking at the dishes prepared by the French cook with the help of Margherita, Teresa and Felicita. “Your assembly, my dear, is a veritable feast,” Princess Stahremberg whispered in Lucia’s ear at the sight of the merry crowd.28 In early January, they had a more intimate soirée, and a week later they hosted a ball—the final step in Lucia’s initiation after an apprenticeship that had lasted eighteen months.
Lucia chose her dress with special care. She wanted to look fashionable without appearing too daring, mindful that Vienna was always at least a season behind Paris. She greeted her guests in a long white taffeta dress, rimmed at the bottom by a silk garland, also white. Over the dress, she wore a white knee-length tunic lined with two stripes of silver. She had long, light grey sleeves and a matching camisole, and wore a string of pearls mixed with Venetian glass beads. Her hair was combed backwards, into a bonnet crowned with a bouquet of large and fluffy white flowers. A light make-up gave her a natural look. “The French call it couleur intéressante,”29 she informed her sister in her next-day report, pleased that everything had gone smoothly and that her dress had been much admired. Was it too extravagant for Paolina’s taste? Lucia thought it probably was, given her sister’s habit of dressing so unassumingly. “But then we do have different tastes, don’t we? I like to be among the first to wear the latest fashion, because it always ends up being adopted by everyone else—especially if it comes from abroad. You, on the other hand, won’t even wear a coat if it looks too new. What can I say?” she asked teasingingly. “I think you’re wrong!”30
Alvise had every reason to be grateful for Lucia’s success in Vienna. The cloud that still hung over him when he had arrived a year and a half earlier had dissolved thanks largely to her amiable character and her determination. She had restored the Mocenigo name to respectability without appearing eager or calculating, and slowly she had built an ever-larger circle of friends. Her well-worn leather notebook bore testimony to her efforts. By the end of the winter she had paid 114 courtesy visits to all the important houses, criss-crossing the city from Prince de Ligne’s modest palace off the Place des Ecossais to Prince Esterhazy’s grand estate near the High Bridge over the Danube.
Lucia had also succeeded in the smaller but no less impressive feat of making peace with the grouchy Venetians, including old Francesco Labia, the dean of the émigrés, who had refused to speak to them when they had arrived. “Now he too wishes to be our friend,” she noted with satisfaction.31 The Vienna government decided not to reinstate the Golden Book of the old Venetian nobility after all, but to give out Austrian titles instead, and only after a careful examination of each request. The more nostalgic Venetians felt rather glum about the irrevocable demise of that age-old symbol of the Republic. To cheer them up, Lucia often had them over