Free Lucia by Andrea Di Robilant

This time Lucia felt more in control of herself, and happy, although her happiness was tempered by the experience she had had only a few months before. She took the greatest care to carry out as best she could what she now accepted as her highest duty: “My beloved husband, rest assured that I am taking every precaution I can to make our happiness even more perfect, and I move about as little as possible.” 11
    By late spring, the crucial first three months had passed with no sign of danger, and Lucia, having obtained a green light from the family obstetrician, felt confident enough to travel out to Dolo, a lovely village on the river Brenta where the Mocenigos and other patrician families had summer houses. Lucia spent her days quietly, getting herself acquainted with the house. Le Scalette was a Renaissance villa, long and narrow, situated on the bank of the river and separated from the clear, slow-moving water by a pathway that led directly to the village half a mile away. In the back of the house was a formal garden with box hedges and potted lemons and decorative statues. Beyond it, fields of wheat and maize extended inland as far as the eye could see. Lucia had the house cleaned and scrubbed from top to bottom, she brought paintings from Venice with which to redecorate the bedrooms, she stocked up the kitchen with supplies of coffee, sugar and flour and had Alvise send more silverware. To better enjoy the cool, she had the dining table moved out to the loggia, which overlooked the Brenta on one side and the garden on the other.
    Once the house was in order, she rested and nursed her growing belly. She embroidered shirts for Alvise, played cards, took slow walks to Dolo, stopping at the busy coffee house where other holidaymakers gathered for a little gossip. She paid visits to her neighbours and made a point of cultivating Mocenigo friends and relatives who lived close by. Her mother-in-law frequently came to see her from nearby Padua, bringing baskets of fresh fruit and vegetables. Lucia sometimes asked her father, who was also in Padua for the summer, to come over for lunch so he and Chiara could entertain themselves by talking about old times while she played lady of the house. “I want to describe to you the meal I gave your mother and my papa today,” she wrote proudly to Alvise, listing the items on the menu, which included “rice with quails, red meat, cutlets with sauce, mushrooms in casserole, fresh vegetables, salami, salad…” 12
    Alvise came and went. In the course of the summer he visited the Mocenigo estates, checking on the crops, going through the accounts, settling disputes among the farmers. But he was also busy with his new duties as Savio di Terraferma: touring government houses, hospitals and technical schools where he gave speeches, spoke to the teachers, encouraged the students and gave out prizes. On occasion he travelled to Verona, where his father, to everyone’s surprise, had been appointed governor—his first assignment after the long period of confinement in Brescia. Sebastiano had worked hard behind the scenes to be readmitted into active political duty. “We will see his resurrection after all,” 13 Memmo noted wryly, not realising he would soon regret that very “resurrection.”
    Sebastiano’s acrimony towards Alvise softened, at least for a while, and Lucia was “very disappointed” not to be able to travel to Verona to take advantage of this rare “moment of peace between my dear husband and his father.” She longed to be with Alvise but she did not want to weigh on him. “Tonight I will savour the only good thing I have left: to dream of you and think of you all the time…Adieu my dearest one. I want to give you a kiss even as I write you this letter. So here it is, where I mark this dot • Adieu my love.” 14
             
    A lvise’s complicated relationship with Sebastiano reminded Lucia how fortunate she was that her husband and her father got along so