A Venetian Affair (20 page)

Giustiniana’s own future seemed so uncertain that the notion of returning to Venice just to be close to Andrea was never far from her thoughts. Once her brothers had settled in England could she not make her way back, unmarried and unmarriageable perhaps, and therefore free of the burden that had forced her to abandon Venice? “I will come to live there in whatever circumstances,” she wrote. “In the end I need little and much prefer peace and a quiet life to all the efforts I would have to undertake to change my situation; anyway, what good would I ever be capable of away from you?”

The fantasies faded as quickly as they formed. It was enough to look up from the paper she was writing on to remind herself that she was in Paris with a mission. Although her heart was not really in that far-fetched plan to seduce La Pouplinière, the old
fermier
général,
Andrea need not worry: she had not forgotten it. “I will attend to it because I promised you I would. I will set my thoughts on him as soon as I am allowed out. But returning to be with you—forgive me—will always be my primary aim.”

However, their
démarche
with Bernis to obtain residency papers did not look promising: “We are anxiously awaiting a reply, but it might be difficult to get permission to stay.” There was even talk of “a new edict against the English.” (In September ten thousand British troops had landed in Brittany, and they had frayed French nerves considerably before being pushed back to sea.) Cooped up at the Hôtel d’Anjou, Giustiniana and her family lived in fear of a sudden expulsion from the country. There was a great deal of tension, and as usual Mrs. Anna was taking it out on everyone, including the faithful Zandiri: “She’s become unbearable. . . . Even Giacomo she cannot stand anymore. She torments him to the point that I have come to pity him.”

Each day the sense of isolation increased. The Wynnes had no life outside the hotel. Ambassador Erizzo’s invitation to dinner had failed to materialize even though they had been in Paris nearly a month. To make matters worse, Giustiniana had lost a batch of letters of recommendation Andrea had written for her before her departure from Venice—and she suspected her mother had taken them. Even the one person she had been confident would rush over to see her—young Chavannes, her former suitor—did not come to visit. “Perhaps he is still upset that we stopped writing to him when he revealed to us that he was not a count,” she ventured. “I don’t much care about that really . . .”

In December Bernis finally sent word to the Wynnes. He begged their forgiveness for the tardiness of his reply “with very graceful expressions.” Unfortunately, he could grant them permission to stay in Paris for only another fifteen days, twenty at the most. It was depressing news. What the Wynnes did not immediately realize was that Bernis himself would remain in Paris for even less time.

As Ambassador Erizzo explained to the Wynnes, Bernis was a “creature” of Mme de Pompadour. He had risen to power in large measure because he had agreed to become the instrument of her new policy of friendship with Austria at the expense of Prussia, France’s traditional ally. That momentous switch in alliances had set the stage for the bloody conflict that was now raging in Europe, North America, and the Indian subcontinent. Bernis, however, had never been an enthusiastic supporter of the war against Prussia and England, which was proving very costly. He agonized over French losses and looked for ways to reach an honorable peace. Mme de Pompadour, backed by Louis XV, felt it was impossible to come to terms from a position of weakness. The war effort had to go on—at least until France’s negotiating position improved. The mere sight of Bernis’s glum round face at Versailles had become intolerable to the king and his mistress. He had to go. Louis XV arranged for him to be raised to the purple by Pope Clement XIII and then dismissed him from his post. “Cardinal de Bernis’s health, which has not been good for some time, makes it impossible for him to keep the position of minister of foreign affairs,” it was announced in the authorities’ official Gazette de France.
²
A few days later, on December 13, the king exiled the new cardinal to his estate at Vic-sur-Aisne, near Soissons, a full day’s trip north of Paris. His demise had been even swifter than his rapid climb to power three years earlier.

“Now, here is a lost cause,” Giustiniana noted wistfully. “What is the use of having memorized all his works to learn to think like him and say the right things when we met?” Overnight, people ceased talking of Bernis except in the most derisive manner. “The
bon mot
currently making the rounds,” she told Andrea, “says he was given a cardinal’s cap so as better to take his bow.”

The Wynnes’ petition was passed on to the new minister of foreign affairs, the Duc de Choiseul. There was little else Giustiniana could do during that cold December except bide her time and avail herself of the distractions offered by the house. “I have a whole crowd of the most unbearable worshipers here,” she wrote to Andrea, hoping perhaps to make him jealous. “I laugh with them, but I never give them any hope. I make them despair over me. This is my amusement.”

The main protagonists in this amorous siege were the two Russian aristocrats, Prince Dolgorouki and the Muscovite. They were distant cousins and quarreled constantly, bad-mouthing each other at every opportunity. The two of them were friends of Princess Galitzine, the wealthy wife of the Russian ambassador, who lived not far from rue Dauphine, surrounded by a circle of expatriates who frequently dropped by the Hôtel d’Anjou, bringing with them an air of Russian exuberance. The French
mousquetaire
still lurked in the background, though Giustiniana had managed to draw him out a little. “He’s not a bad type,” she wrote Andrea. “He speaks to me often, but when the Muscovite approaches he moves away.” Lesser characters “tormented” her as well, including “a rather grand individual” whose “endless sighs” she really could not stand, and “a foreigner who is here with his wife. Imagine . . .”

Among this eclectic band of
innamorati
Giustiniana had a marked preference for the Muscovite, a tall, handsome twenty-seven-year-old, “magnificently dressed and quite a gentleman.” He said he was related to Princess Galitzine but explained, perhaps taking a swipe at his less prepossessing rival Dolgorouki, “that he does not wish to use his own title because he considers it a ridiculous affectation some Russian aristocrats tend to indulge in, especially here in Paris.” Giustiniana knew little about him except that he had arrived in Paris ten months earlier, had already spent a fortune, and had conquered the hearts of many French ladies. Her frequent updates from the Hôtel d’Anjou made it clear to Andrea that she herself was not insensitive to his charms:

Last night the innkeeper’s daughters asked us to stop by their
apartment because a woman was going to sing
chansons poissardes,
songs about the Pont Neuf that I enjoy very much. So we
went and found ourselves among a large company. The Muscovite came over to me and showered me with expressions of love.
I was in a good mood and I made fun of the things he said to me,
insisting that his little speech was very old style and his bleeding
heart and all the rest were quite unfashionable. I must say, he
does
have a sense of humor, and he handles himself well.

A few days later she was still on the lookout for the handsome Russian:

I was lying in bed this morning when I heard a few shots in the
garden. The Muscovite was target shooting with a Frenchman. I
went down with the innkeeper’s daughters. I took a few shots
myself and won the round. I then recalled that day in Padua
when I was trying my hand with a pistol and nearly killed you by
mistake. Do you remember?

After a couple of weeks the Muscovite was clearly enlivening her confinement:

He spends most of the day here at the hotel, he leaves the shows
early to come back as soon as possible. He is happy when he can be
with me. . . . Every morning when I wake up I see him either in the
garden or at his window, across the garden; he waits until my windows are opened, and he comes to me as soon as I get up.

Then he spoiled things by losing control of himself:

The other evening, after I left the innkeeper’s apartment, the
Muscovite took my hand in a small passageway and started to hug
me tightly. He used his strength, his prayers, and all his weapons of
seduction to take liberties with me; he touched my breast, and he
pressed me; but I held him back despite his insistence—and the
natural temptation I might have felt for a man who was quite
beside himself over me—until I saw that he was in quite a state,
trembling and loving at the same time. I managed to run away
from him, not without first having torn his sleeve and scratched
his hands.

The following day Giustiniana avoided the Muscovite as much as possible. “I just gave him the opportunity to make a thousand apologies and blame everything on love, as you men are wont to do.” But the Hôtel d’Anjou was a small establishment, and unless she locked herself up in her room it was unlikely she could keep the Muscovite at a safe distance for long, especially since he gave every indication that he was eager to go back on the offensive. Indeed it appeared his Russian heart pounded faster than ever after his clumsy assault outside the innkeeper’s apartment. He sought Giustiniana out in the hallways of the hotel and whispered “a thousand things” to her.

As he read her reports, Andrea must have wondered how much longer she could possibly resist the
avances
of the handsome Russian. Hadn’t she just mentioned in passing the temptation she had felt during her scuffle with the Muscovite? But then he knew her well enough to appreciate the way in which she was trying to get even with him for the anxiety he had caused her with his careless talk about the beautiful nun.

One night Giustiniana had been sleeping for several hours when she was suddenly awakened by the sound of scratching at the end of the bed. In the darkness she did not immediately realize that she was lying in her nightdress completely uncovered, her blankets bunched up by her feet. “I did not move,” she later wrote to Andrea. “I did not breathe. After a short while I heard the sound of footsteps—someone walking away and lowering himself into the garden. I was shaken. I pulled my blankets up, got under the covers, and thought: the Muscovite must have come to my window from the garden and, seeing that a pane of the window near the end of the bed was broken, he had grabbed the blankets from outside and pulled them toward him, uncovering me. ”

Giustiniana went back to sleep thinking she would let him have it the next morning. Fifteen minutes later she felt her blankets slip away again and the bed begin to shake.

“Who’s there?” she cried out.

“Not a peep, Mademoiselle; just come to the window and hear me.” To her complete surprise, she recognized the voice of the
mousquetaire.

“How do you expect me to listen to you at this late hour? Leave at once.”

“I have come to tell you I adore you, and I intend to prove it to you.”

“You are mad, Monsieur. Your brain has gone soft. So leave the window at once and don’t bother me anymore, or else I shall look upon you as the last of the scoundrels.”

The
mousquetaire
insisted she come to the window until he realized the key to the glass-paned door next to the window had been left in the outside lock. He let himself in “and threw himself on the bed in an instant.”

“You villain, what do you want to gain with this violence?” Giustiniana lashed out. “I detest you. Leave at once!”

He took off his dressing gown and forced himself into her bed.

“I felt only anger and contempt,” she told Andrea. “I defended myself with all my strength, using my nails and my cape, which luckily I had used as a cover. He gradually relented and began to use kind words to seduce me. He whimpered and begged. Contemptible man! . . . I hate violence and I hated him, but how could I get rid of him?” If she yelled, her mother, who was sleeping next door, would have come rushing in “and God knows what would have happened if she had found me with that man.” She struggled and prayed and covered him with so many insults that after a while the
mousquetaire
saw “the impossibility of success.” He got up, begged her not to say a word about his failed incursion, and sheepishly left the room.

Giustiniana ran to the door, locked herself in, went back to bed, and lay awake until morning wondering how best to handle the episode. What if the
mousquetaire
spread “his own version of the story” among other guests in the hotel, distorting the facts to make it sound as if his pathetic assault had been a success? Upon returning from mass the next day she found the Muscovite waiting for her at the hotel with the hairdresser, who had come to prepare a new chignon for her. On impulse, she took the Muscovite aside and told him what had happened “in order to have a witness on my side.” He was only mildly surprised, for it turned out that the
mousquetaire
had informed him in advance that he was planning a nocturnal visit. Suspecting it was just talk, the Muscovite had not bothered to warn Giustiniana. Now he advised her to “vent all her resentment” by giving the
mousquetaire
a serious dressing-down and then let the matter rest.

As soon as she took her leave to join the hairdresser, the Muscovite raced off to tell everyone the story. The
mousquetaire
was so embarrassed he did not show his face for nearly a week. Giustiniana claimed to be annoyed by the Muscovite’s indiscretion but decided it was punishment enough for her aggressor and forgot all about it.

The Muscovite lost interest in her. “He is too much a man of the world to be wasting his time with me after what happened,” Giustiniana noted with sarcasm. But then how could these comedy characters, these good-for-nothing half-men, possibly be compared to her Memmo? Her feelings for him were undiminished, and though they caused her sadness they also brought her comfort when she felt low: “I love you, my Memmo. Yes, I love you so much. Too much for my own sake and perhaps even for yours, because if you know your feelings for me are not as strong as mine are for you, my love will surely be a heavy burden.” But if he still loved her, he needn’t worry: “I am as well behaved as you may possibly desire. . . . And I have not forgotten my financier. If perchance we are allowed to stay [in Paris], I will arrange to meet him, and, with enough time to do the job, I will do with him what you want.”