Lucia - Andrea Di Robilant [89]
It was late afternoon by the time they walked back home. The sky was dark blue and the air was ripe with the fragrance of spring blossoms. A pleasant evening breeze gathered up and reddened Lucia’s cheeks. It felt good to be back in Vienna, walking hand-in-hand with her son as they made their way to Saint Stephen’s Square. She took her chance encounter with the emperor as a good omen.
Lucia’s worst fear had come true when she had arrived in Venice the previous autumn: Alvise had indeed found out about her secret child with Colonel Plunkett. What really passed between husband and wife—how Alvise confronted her, how she faced the ordeal, what they said to each other—can only be imagined: there is no trace of this crisis in their surviving correspondence. But the story was mentioned in other people’s diaries and letters, including this surprisingly detailed one, written to Princess Marie Louise Clary*13 by her sister Princess Flore de Ligne, who happened to be in Venice at the time of the scandal:
About a month ago [August 1803] Monsieur Mocenigo comes face to face with a four-year-old boy in someone’s house in Venice; he surmises, he guesses, and in the end he convinces himself that the child belongs to his wife. To be certain of this, he summons her to Venice. She throws herself at his feet, and confesses that the child is the fruit of her attachment to Monsieur de Plonquet [sic]. She begs for his mercy and forgiveness. He replies: “This child is yours, but since I am without children, he will be mine. I shall legitimise him and make him my heir.” The poor woman falls into the greatest affliction. She tells him such a step will disgrace her for ever, that she won’t be able to show her face, that it will cause an extraordinary scandal, etc., etc…The furious husband doesn’t listen, doesn’t want to listen, and threatens a separation if she doesn’t consent to all his demands…He tells her to go to the judge so that the child can be publicly legitimised. Madame Mocenigo, no longer able to reason, does all her nasty husband asks, and everything happens the way he has planned it. Now the poor woman can’t leave the house without being pointed at; as for him, his atrocious behaviour has earned him universal scorn and execration. The whole thing has made an incredible noise here…1
Did Lucia really throw herself at Alvise’s feet begging for mercy? The story making the rounds in Venice was no doubt embellished with details that are impossible to verify. It is certain, however, that after his initial shock, Alvise seized the opportunity to legitimise Lucia’s little boy and make him his heir, at the cost of giving false testimony. In an official statement to the Venice Patriarchy, Alvise declared the boy to be his and Lucia’s natural and legitimate son, “esse vere filium naturalem ac legitimum N. H. Aloysius et Lucia Mocenigo.” 2 Next, he had a clerk at the Patriarchy change the boy’s baptismal records by wedging the name Alvise in front of his original Christian names (Massimiliano Cesare Francesco). Alvise’s deliberate tampering with Church documents did not go down well at the Patriarchy. Church officials knew that the boy was not Alvise’s “filium naturalem.” And evidently the time had passed