A Venetian Affair (23 page)

Paris, February
26

Mon cher frère,

I didn’t write to you last week, my dearest friend . . . but it
wasn’t my fault. Last Monday I was about to sit down to write
my letter when Mr. de La Pouplinière came to see me—for the
third time. After we had exchanged the greatest courtesies and I
had said a few words I thought would be to his liking, he asked
me to go with him to the new Opéra Comique. How could I
refuse? But you’ll be surprised to hear the rest. . . . Not only has
La Pouplinière fallen in love with me: he will marry me. That’s
what he said, and he promised he would give me an income worth
his reputation. Who would ever have thought a man in his sixties
could even think of marrying a foreigner whose character and station, so to speak, he hardly knows? Yet that is the way it is, my
Memmo. Your prayers, your advice, my own wisdom . . . and
above all the wish to see your project, about which we laughed so
much, succeed—all of these have made my good fortune.

Everything was falling neatly into place, it seemed, but the deal was not yet sealed. In the weeks ahead, indeed right up to the wedding ceremony itself, Giustiniana used all her charm and her manipulative skills to make the marriage happen, even as a sharp anxiety began to gnaw at her. Her first move had been to seek the support of Mme de Saint Aubin. She had “worked on her” until she had her “completely” on her side, she told Andrea rather naively. The truth was that the old mistress was playing her own game: she saw Giustiniana as a useful if temporary ally in the drawn-out struggle against the other ladies of the house and gladly instructed her on how best “to please the sultan.” More coaching came from the duplicitous runaway monk La Coste, who became Giustiniana’s friend “by dint of his clever ways.” Meanwhile, the Courcelles and the Zimmermans remained highly suspicious and treated her with deliberate coldness. Quietly, they started a denigration campaign against her. Anonymous letters began to circulate, accusing her of “the most infamous behavior.” She received threats and was followed around by shady characters.

Well aware that members of his own household were trying to discredit Giustiniana, La Pouplinière nevertheless continued his assiduous courtship. He took her to the theater almost every night and had her over for dinner at his house after the shows. This was usually a relatively intimate affair—fifteen to twenty people, mostly members of the household. Mme de Saint Aubin made sure that even such small “family gatherings” were tastefully organized and the musical entertainment was of a superior standard. “When it’s time for dessert,” Giustiniana wrote to Andrea, “the horns and clarinets blend with other, gentler wind instruments and produce the sweetest symphony.” Those celestial sounds helped her bear the strain of those evenings, during which she was “treated like a queen” but openly despised. It was a truly joyless home. “The sadness that lines the old man’s face makes the gaiety of the younger members of the household look so affected. Everyone laughs to make
him
laugh. The place reminds me of the backstage at the Opera, with all the springs and the ropes of the set in full view.”

Yet the more her own mood blackened, the more La Pouplinière was drawn to her. He saw the two of them as kindred spirits. “What interesting melancholy dwells in your soul?” he asked her one evening when she was particularly downcast. “For it stirs my own, it pokes at it. . . . All my happiness depends on whether I can make
you
happy. You’ll find honesty and candor in my character. You’ll see: I’ll succeed in earning your respect, and that’s really all I hope for.” Giustiniana was touched by the sweetness of the old man’s words, and she admitted as much to Andrea: “His eyes were veiled with tears as he said these things to me; he cried and was not afraid to show me all his tenderness. . . . He really moved me. I told him I was filled with feelings of gratitude toward him. He could see it was true, and he looked happy. . . . He gave me his hand and told me to swear I will be his.”

Mme de Saint Aubin planned a surprise party for La Pouplinière’s Saint’s Day. She alerted Giustiniana, so she would not forget to bring a present, and purposely left Mme de Courcelles and Mme Zimmerman in the dark. The “old sultana” choreographed the event with exquisite taste. When all the guests had arrived, two singers who had pretended to be playing chess at one of the little tables in the first salon rose and sang a beautiful duet in praise of La Pouplinière. As soon as they finished, “the most heavenly” music started in the next salon and the guests moved along. In the middle of the room Mme de Saint Aubin herself was giving a virtuoso performance at the harpsichord of a piece she had written for the occasion. When the last notes of her composition had died, the guests were drawn by lively sounds further down the suite of glittering rooms, where a group of singers acted out scenes with a La Pouplinière theme—his wealth, his generosity, his love of the arts. The program ended with Mme de Saint Aubin reciting a musical poem in honor of the master of the house while she plucked skillfully at the strings of her harp.

“La Pouplinière was so moved he wept the whole evening,” Giustiniana reported. “And in the end I did too, though I don’t quite know why.” The success of the soirée was also a reminder of the importance and the power of Mme de Saint Aubin’s role in the house. “Everything was this woman’s creation, and she was praised by all but the other ladies of the house, who had not been told a thing.” When the musical entertainment was over, Giustiniana gave La Pouplinière his present, embellishing the moment with a bit of stagecraft of her own. Playfully, she drew the old man aside. “Come, now,” she said. “I must give you something too.” She was wearing a black braided string around her neck from which hung a little heart of gold “gently resting on my breast.” She took out a pair of tiny scissors, and with one clean clip she cut the little heart loose. “This is for you, it will remind you of mine,” she said to the old man, while to Andrea she wrote: “How happy he was! He adores me . . .”

La Pouplinière was now in a hurry. He realized that the embittered members of his extended family would go to any length to sabotage his marriage to Giustiniana—including Mme de Saint Aubin, who had never seriously thought he would actually take her young protégée for a wife. He acted with speed and secrecy. Before the end of February he instructed his lawyer, M. Brunet, to work on Giustiniana’s naturalization papers. He made her sit in front of the portraitist “every morning until two hours past midday.” He pressed the Wynnes to send immediately for the wedding authorization from the Venice Archdiocese (an official document signed by the archbishop stating that Giustiniana had no other ties and was free to marry). Finally, he presented Giustiniana with an engagement ring—two hearts elegantly entwined—and the promise of a generous income. “I think he has in mind something on the order of forty thousand francs,” she told Andrea. “That would be ten thousand silver ducats a year. What do you say?”

It was nearly twice as large as the income of the entire Memmo family.

Andrea had finally returned to Venice, and from what we can infer from Giustiniana’s letters he was following the developments very closely. Without his letters, it is impossible to know how he really felt about the situation. Still, the plan had been his idea from the beginning, and as far as one can tell, he seems to have been very interested in the details of the arrangements. He certainly said little to dissuade her from going ahead with the marriage. Indeed, when the Wynnes’ request for an authorization from the archdiocese arrived in Venice, Andrea was quick to offer his assistance and even pulled a few strings to accelerate the matter.

By early March, on the other hand, Giustiniana was facing a serious crisis: the prospect of spending the rest of her life in that extravagant and poisonous household was making her very anxious. There was no way of telling how Andrea could ever fit into such an arrangement as long as the old man was alive. And after La Pouplinière’s death, then what? The likeliest outcome would be total war between her and the mistresses, the relatives, and the various hangers-on. It was easy enough to see the material advantages the marriage would bring her. It was not so easy to imagine how she could live happily as the
maîtresse de maison
at rue de Richelieu. “How important can those advantages be when they are measured against one’s happiness?” she asked Andrea. “As rich as he is about to make me, it will never be worth what I am giving him. My happiness for money! But does my happiness have a price? It is all so different from the way we once thought we could live, always free, always together in boundless happiness. . . . I speak to you of things that truly sadden me, and I wonder if you feel what I say with the same power I feel in saying it.”

Giustiniana still had time to stop the plan from being rushed through. As hard as it was, and as pressing as La Pouplinière could be, she could still say no and keep her reputation—and her future— intact. She often felt “the strongest desire to refuse the greatest fortune ever offered me.” Yet despite her wavering she continued to let events unfold, reminding herself of the logic behind this improbable marriage: it would bring her and Andrea close again. “You will come to Paris shortly, won’t you?” she asked Andrea uneasily. “Whatever I will be able to give you is yours, and I would resent you as much as I have admired you if you were moved [to refuse it] by a form of false sensitivity. . . . I want you to be my husband’s best friend, and I want him to satisfy all your needs. Leave it to me.”

On March 6, she wrote, “My good fortune is still moving forward steadily. The old man wishes to marry me in a month’s time.” The pace of events accelerated. The following week she wrote, “I don’t have a minute to myself. . . . The man can be brutal. . . . He evicted a niece of his from the house by doing all sorts of impertinences because she occupied the best apartment—which as of today is being readied for me.”

Inevitably, word about the impending marriage began to leak out. By the end of March the story about how the young and beautiful Venetian had hooked one of the wealthiest men in Paris was on everyone’s lips. Mme de Pompadour herself, perhaps longing for distractions from the gloomy war bulletins, was said to be following the story with amusement from her chambers at Versailles. At the Hôtel de Hollande there was an atmosphere of celebration. The Wynnes were thrilled at Giustiniana’s catch. Mrs. Anna in particular could not believe her daughter’s luck and was furiously corresponding with the religious authorities in Venice. All the Russians came to congratulate their friend. Prince Dolgorouki and the Muscovite were so caught up in the general excitement that they even stopped talking about their duel.

The wedding was to take place in mid-April, on the first Sunday after Easter. The Venetians felt especially proud. On April 1, Ambassador Erizzo informed his friends in Venice about Giustiniana’s “spectacular good fortune.”
⁸
Farsetti, the spurned suitor, now filled his days running errands and acting as Giustiniana’s secretary at the Hôtel de Hollande. He consoled himself with the notion that he had been instrumental in arranging the excellent match. “Your Excellency must surely know,” he wrote to Andrea, “that Signora Giustiniana Wynne is close to making a very advantageous matrimony, even though her husband-to-be is not young. What gives me pleasure is that I brought her into that house and introduced her to that person.”
⁹

He added, at the request of Giustiniana, that it would be nice if Andrea could make the journey to Paris on this “splendid occasion.”

CHAPTER Seven

Early on April 4, as a new day was breaking over Paris, Giustiniana sneaked out of the Hôtel de Hollande wrapped in a cloak, the hood pulled over her head. She took a horse-drawn cab to a nearby church, paid the coachman, got into a second cab, and had herself driven to yet another church. From there she took a third cab and exited the city from the eastern Porte Saint-Antoine, leaving an erratic trail behind her to confound any pursuer. At full gallop, the coachman drove her out to a Benedictine convent in the small village of Conflans, some two leagues beyond the city limits.
¹

The abbess, Henriette de Mérinville, was expecting Giustiniana. She took her in under the pseudonym of Mlle de la Marne and assigned her to a small room in her own private apartment. The past few weeks had been especially hard, and Giustiniana immediately felt relieved in the company of this warm, generous woman who went by the religious name of Mother Eustachia. It was so peaceful. From her window Giustiniana looked down to the valley where the Marne flowed gently into the Seine. Angelic chants rose from the chapel and drifted to her quarters. Everything around her, even the crisp cleanliness of her simple room, had a soothing effect on her frayed nerves. At last she felt safe behind the thick convent walls.

The strain had started long before the marriage preparations. When Giustiniana had left Venice in September 1758, she had been keeping a secret she had not shared with anyone—not even Andrea. She continued to hide it day after day, in solitude, concealing her growing despair behind her infectious charm. She coped in silence with violent bouts of nausea during the long trip to France. In Paris, frequent spells of drowsiness forced her to seek refuge in the privacy of her small room. Yet she threw herself into the social mêlée with as much energy as she could muster, and she made her way into La Pouplinière’s heart with the kind of recklessness that comes from sheer desperation. But she could not hide her condition indefinitely: by the end of January she was already five months pregnant. She decided to confide her secret to the one person who might spare her the sermonizing and help her find a practical way out of her trouble.

After his triumphant return from Holland, Casanova had moved out to Petite Pologne, a small community northwest of Paris, just beyond the city walls. He lived in style: he rented a large house called Cracovie en Bel Air, with two gardens, stables, several baths, a good cellar, and an excellent cook, Mme de Saint Jean, who went by the name of “La Perle.” He kept two carriages and five very fast
enragés,
the mettlesome horses bred in the king’s stables and known for their furious speed—one of Casanova’s greatest pleasures, he tells us in his memoirs, was “driving fast”
²
through the streets of Paris.

Initially Giustiniana was somewhat dismissive of Casanova. She invited him over to the Hôtel de Hollande, but she did not encourage his advances. In fact, when she wrote to Andrea she was quite biting in her description of his general demeanor. Very quickly, though, she began to warm to him—and she stopped mentioning him in her letters. One night in late January she went to the Opera Ball wearing a black domino that covered her face completely. She cut herself loose from the rest of the company—Ambassador Erizzo, Farsetti, the Russians, her sisters—and sought out Casanova. He was thrilled by her attention, of course, and when they finally managed to be alone in a box, he smothered her with declarations of undying love. The next day he showed up for dinner at the Hôtel de Hollande, covered with snowflakes. Giustiniana was in bed writing a letter and received him in her small room. The two of them talked until dinner was called. Not feeling hungry, she stayed in bed. Casanova, smiling at the pleasant intimacy growing between them, bade her farewell, and went downstairs to sup with the rest of the family.

Two days later, a young footman came out to Cracovie en Bel Air and handed Casanova an envelope from Giustiniana. It contained a stunning letter, written in great haste, that was rambling, confused, and filled with desperation. In the interest of secrecy it was unsigned and bore no date:

You wish me to speak, to tell you the reason for my sadness.
Well, then, I am ready to do so. I am putting my life, my reputation, my whole being in your hands and through you I hope to find
my salvation. I beg you to assist an unhappy soul who will have
no other recourse but to seek her own death if she cannot remedy
her situation. Here it is, dear Casanova: I am pregnant, and I
shall kill myself if I am found out. It is now five months since
my weakness and someone else’s deception caused me to hide in
my breast the unhappy evidence of my ignorance and carelessness. No one knows about this, and the very author of my misery
has been kept in the dark. I have managed to hide my secret so
far, but I will not be able to deceive the world much longer. . . .
My belly will begin to show. . . . And my mother, so proud and
unreasonable, what will she do with me if she learns the truth?
You think like a philosopher, you are an honest man. . . . Save me
if it is still possible and if you know how. My whole being, and
everything I possess, will be yours if you help me. I will be so
grateful. . . . If I go back to my original state my fortune is
assured. I will tell you everything: La Popinière
[sic]
is offering
me his house, he loves me and will provide for me in one way or
another if only I can keep the whole thing from collapsing.
Farsetti too
is offering me his hand, but I am sure I can get all I
want from the former provided I free myself of the burden that
dishonors me. Casanova dearest, please do your best to help me
find a surgeon, a doctor . . . who will lift me out of my misery by
delivering me with whatever remedy and if necessary by force. . . .
I do not fear pain, and as for payment, promise [the surgeon] anything you like. I will sell diamonds; he will be amply rewarded.
I trust you: I have only you in the whole world. You will be my
Redeemer. Ah Casanova, if only you knew how much I have
wept! . . . I have never had anyone to confide in, and you are now
my guardian angel. Go see some of the theater girls, ask them if
they’ve ever found themselves in the need to deliver themselves
the way I wish to do. . . . I didn’t have the courage to speak to you
in person about this. Oh God, if only you knew what I am going
through! Let’s do all we can to make me live. . . . Farewell. . . .
Save me. I trust you.
¹⁷

Stunned by Giustiniana’s revelation, Casanova rushed over to the Hotel de Hollande. He was surprised that she was already five months pregnant because she was “slim” and her figure was “beyond suspicion.”
³
She said she wanted to go ahead with the abortion as soon as possible. He warned her that it could endanger her life; besides, it was a crime. Giustiniana repeated that she would rather die than tell her mother the truth. “I have the poison ready,”
⁴
she blurted out. Casanova took pity on her and agreed, against his better judgment, to take her to a midwife who might suggest a remedy. They planned to meet again at the following Opera Ball and sneak out together.

The next ball was held in mid-February, at the height of Carnival. Giustiniana and Casanova arrived separately. Both wore a black domino, but Giustiniana could easily identify Casanova because he wore a white Venetian mask with a small rose painted under his left eye. After midnight, when the crowd was at its thickest, the two slipped away, found a hackney cab, and drove back across the Seine to the Left Bank, to meet the midwife in a run-down little apartment in rue des Cordeliers, near the Church of Saint-Sulpice.

Reine Demay, a louche, unkempt woman in her thirties, let them in. Her late-night visitors in their full Carnival attire impressed her. Giustiniana in particular struck her as “a young and pretty woman, magnificently dressed, wrapped in a pelisse of grey silk lined with sable; the skin of her face was very white, her hair and eyebrows dark brown; she was neither tall nor small . . . spoke French with difficulty.”
⁵
She too noticed how Giustiniana was “very thin,” considering the fact that she was by then into her sixth month.

According to Casanova, Reine Demay said she would prepare a potion that was certain to induce an abortion, adding that it would cost them the considerable sum of fifty louis—half the yearly rent he paid for Cracovie en Bel Air. And if perchance it did not work, she would teach them a surefire way to kill the fetus. The conversation turned uncomfortable. Abortion was a serious crime, punishable by death. It occurred to Casanova that he should have been more circumspect in the matter. It was certainly not prudent to bring Giustiniana to this shady midwife in the dead of night. Suddenly he was in a hurry to leave. He left two louis on the mantel-piece. Awkwardly, he pulled out two loaded pistols he had brought with him. Was he threatening the midwife? Was he trying to reassure Giustiniana? Whatever his intention—it may be he simply pulled them out in order to get dressed—the sight of the pistols sent a shiver down Giustiniana’s spine. “Put those weapons away,” she said. “They frighten me.”
⁶

It was after three in the morning when they stepped outside. Giustiniana complained that she was cold. They decided to drive out to Petite Pologne, warm up by the fire, and have a quick bite to eat before returning to the Opera Ball. The streets were empty. A cab took them flying across Paris. It did not take more than fifteen minutes to reach Cracovie en Bel Air. Casanova lit a fire, opened a bottle of champagne, and asked La Perle, grumpy and sleepy-eyed, to fix an omelette. The nasty aftertaste of their visit to rue des Cordeliers quickly faded, and the host was now in his most gallant mood. As they sat by the fire, talking and sipping champagne, Giustiniana’s reticence also seemed to fade, as if she wished to forget for a while the reason that had brought them together. Casanova was quick to seize the moment. “And now we have finished the bottle”—this is how he describes the scene in his memoirs—“and we rise, and half-pleadingly half-using feeble force, I drop onto the bed, holding her in my arms; but she opposes my intention, first with honey-coated words, then by firm resistance, and finally by defending herself. That ends it. The mere idea of violence revolts me.”
⁷

Casanova drove Giustiniana back to the Opera Ball and soon lost her in the crowd. She found her friends, who asked her where she had been for so long. She waved to them mysteriously and headed for the dance floor. She danced hard until six in the morning while a thousand candles slowly burnt themselves out in the hall. The crowd gradually thinned. In the smoky predawn haze she wondered whether her movements had been sharp enough to damage the child growing inside her.

In her letter to Casanova, Giustiniana had not revealed who the father of the child was. It may have been Andrea: if she was into her sixth month when she went to visit Reine Demay, it meant the child had been conceived in the last days of August or the first days of September—in other words, during the month or so before the Wynnes’ departure from Venice. And if Andrea was the father, one must presume she decided to keep him in the dark in order to protect him. But it is just as plausible that her pregnancy was the fruit of her brief and much-regretted affair with her nameless lover. The picture of what exactly transpired during Giustiniana’s last few months in Venice is too blurred to provide a definitive answer. So blurred, in fact, that yet another possibility comes to mind: the day the child was conceived might have been so close to Giustiniana’s reconciliation with Andrea that it could well be that she herself was not entirely sure whose child it was. Whatever the truth, Giustiniana, mindful of the price her mother had had to pay for secretly having her child, was determined not to keep the baby.

Casanova had been right to think he had made a mistake in taking Giustiniana to Reine Demay. Word of their visit quickly spread in the shady underworld around the
foire
in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. On February 26, less than two weeks after their unpleasant meeting with the midwife, a man appeared on Monsieur de La Pouplinière’s doorstep claiming to have very damaging information on the young Englishwoman who frequented his house.

Louis de Castelbajac was an impoverished marquis and a well-known crook. Tall, gaunt, and somewhat sinister-looking, with devilish eyes and a pockmarked face, he had migrated to Paris from his estate near Toulouse and lived by extortion and larceny. Working the streets at the
foire,
he had picked up information about the nocturnal visit to the midwife and decided to profit by it. He teamed up with Reine Demay and called on La Pouplinière— possibly with the connivance of some of the
fermier général’
s embittered relatives. He told him that a young woman whom he identified as Giustiniana had gone to see Reine Demay two weeks earlier. The midwife had examined her, he said, and had found her to be in an advanced state of pregnancy. The young woman had asked for an abortion, and the midwife had refused. La Pouplinière showed Castelbajac the door, insisting that the person in question could not have been Giustiniana. On his way out, Castelbajac said he would send the midwife over to confirm the story. Sure enough, later that day, Reine Demay appeared at La Pouplinière’s and repeated what Castelbajac had said. She too was promptly dismissed.

A few days later, La Pouplinière instructed his trusted secretary Maisonneuve to pay Giustiniana a visit, just to be on the safe side. Rumors about her pregnancy had been whirling around ever since La Pouplinière had begun to court her. Several anonymous letters had surfaced, one of which—apparently penned by the duplicitous Abbé de La Coste—accused Giustiniana of having already given birth to two children in Venice, besides being pregnant with a third. La Pouplinière had expected his family to undermine Giustiniana any way they could. For that very reason he was pressing ahead with the marriage as fast as possible. But he was not about to abandon all prudence.