Scarpia

by Piers Paul Read

  One morning, in late autumn, Paola found Spoletta eating a fig in the garden. As was the custom, Paola was easy-going about the behaviour of her servants, but she had not expected to run into Spoletta, found the sight of his blubbery lips sucking out the pink pith of fig disgusting, and was thus provoked to ask him, in a cold manner, to leave the garden and then, as an afterthought, change her mind. ‘No, come and sit down. I should like to talk to you.’

  She sat down on a stone bench. Spoletta did not sit but stood facing her, licking his sticky fingers and then wiping them on his tunic. He said nothing. He waited.

  ‘Tell me, Spoletta,’ she said. ‘Has it not occurred to you that you are capable of better things than serving my husband as a valet?’

  Spoletta looked at her with no expression, then said: ‘I am happy to serve the baron in whatever way he chooses.’

  ‘That is commendable,’ said Paola, avoiding his eyes, looking down at her hands, clasped on her knee, ‘and of course I understand that when you are on campaigns, you are more than a valet; that you have fought at his side from the beginning and are as good with the sword as you are at dressing a wig – indeed better. But that is precisely my point. You know the international situation as well as I do. It is unlikely that Our Holy Father will ever again put an army in the field. Our destiny will be decided by the great powers. My husband’s role is now largely ceremonial. You were companions in your youth; you were inseparable, I understand that. But you . . . How do you see your future? You are able. You can read. You could aspire to do much more than dress wigs and run errands. If you cared to, and left our household with suitable means, you could surely become more, much more, than you are now.’

  Spoletta gave a shallow bow. ‘The principessa is kind to think so highly of my abilities.’

  ‘Europe is filled with men and women who have defied their destiny to rise in rank; women, I concede, by exploiting their natural beauty, but men with their native wit. Take a man like the Chevalier de Seignalt, born a Signor Casanova, the son of actors, who has been received by all the monarchs of Europe and received the Order of the Golden Spur from His Holiness the Pope. You, too, if you cut yourself loose from your servile employment here in this household, could achieve great things – and of course, we would not let you go empty-handed into the world.’

  Spoletta looked at Paola with his usual insouciant gaze. ‘Is this the view of the baron,’ he asked, ‘or is it just yours?’

  ‘It is mine,’ said Paola. ‘I have not spoken about this to my husband. He values your services, I know.’

  ‘He could find another valet,’ said Spoletta.

  ‘He could.’

  ‘And one, no doubt, who could better dress a wig.’

  ‘No doubt.’

  ‘But there are other things I can do for the baron – things that he would be loath to do himself.’

  Paola blushed. Her life had been sheltered. What was Spoletta referring to? Shooting bandits, perhaps, or cutting the throats of Turks? ‘Of course,’ she said, speaking in a knowing tone to conceal her ignorance, ‘you are his right-hand man, and there are times in life when the left hand does not know what the right is doing . . .’

  ‘And does not want to know.’

  ‘Indeed. And a one-handed man is weak. I understand that. And were my husband to be called upon to fight, then I am sure he would need you at his side. But he should not keep you here as a domestic servant. You should aspire to more. I am told you enjoy visiting the tavernas in Trastevere. Why not become an innkeeper? We could buy you a taverna or an osteria.’

  ‘You are most generous . . .’ An ironic inclination of the head.

  ‘Or you could manage one of our properties. Anything. But I no longer want to see you in my house.’

  Again, Spoletta gave a slight bow. ‘Should we not consult the baron?’

  ‘No.’ She spoke emphatically. ‘You are not to come between me and my husband.’

  ‘And if I prefer to remain?’

  ‘Then you can take your chances. But I think you should remember, Spoletta, that Rome is my city, not yours, and it would be unwise to antagonise a Marcisano. Someone is killed every night in Trastevere and little would be made of the death of a Sicilian valet.’

  *

  That night Scarpia was told by Spoletta that he wished to resume his life as a soldier. Scarpia said he understood; Spoletta was not suited to the life of a domestic servant. Scarpia said he would arrange through Ruffo for a return to the garrison of the Castel Sant’Angelo. ‘And perhaps,’ he added, ‘you should look for a wife.’

  ‘A wife?’ said Spoletta, with a sniff of derision. ‘What would I want with a wife? They trap you, then nag you. I have never met one who is not either a bully or sly.’

  ‘My wife is neither one nor the other,’ said Scarpia.

  Spoletta said nothing.

  Irritated, Scarpia said: ‘Well, I dare say women lack refinement in some circles, but no man is complete, I would say, unless he has a wife.’

  Lying next to his wife in bed that night, Scarpia told her that Spoletta was returning to the garrison of the Castel Sant’Angelo.

  ‘But what about the taverna?’ asked Paola.

  ‘What taverna?’ asked Scarpia.

  ‘Oh, I heard from Nunzi that he was thinking of buying a taverna in Trastevere.’

  ‘He said nothing about it to me.’

  ‘Clearly, Nunzi misunderstood.’

  This was the first time that Paola had lied to her husband.

  3

  Three months after the birth of her first child, a son, Pietro, Paola di Marcisano, Baroness Scarpia di Rubaso, began to pay calls in her carriage. Now that she had her own household, she was on easier terms with her parents and her brother Ludovico. The young among Roman society were all her cousins or old friends. She was valued by the older generation: she may have had little formal education, but she had a quick intelligence and had read many books – The Sorrows of Young Werther, of course, and forbidden romantic novels that had given her a taste for a warrior husband, but also the works of Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the Scot David Hume (in French translation), and even the atheist Helvetius, whose works were causing so much trouble at the time. ‘Your daughter,’ Cardinal de Bernis had told her father, Prince di Marcisano, ‘has the makings of another Madame de Staël.’

  Paola was, of course, a Catholic, and was protected from the virus of scepticism by her romanità. All that she was, both within and without, was shaped and coloured by the Roman Catholic and Apostolic faith. Her calendar was punctuated by the feast days of the Church. She revelled in the carnival, but then fasted savagely in Lent. She prayed to the Virgin daily for her intercession on the most trivial matters, and called upon specialist saints to put pressure on God on particular issues. To achieve what at first appeared impossible, securing Scarpia as her husband, she had placed a petition to San Luigi da Gonzaga in the box in the Jesuit church, the Gesù. Later, she had prayed to the Virgin’s mother, St Anne, to ensure that she should conceive and bear a healthy child, and had left a petition at the olive-wood figure of the Infant Jesus, the Bambino, at the Aracoeli asking that the child should be a boy. And she had prayed again to the Virgin, leaving a lavish offering at the ancient basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, to spare her son Pietro when he fell ill. All her prayers had been answered. What reason had she to doubt?

  It was not that she did not come across sceptics. The Spanish ambassador, Azara, was a discreet free-thinker of the old school, and the Scarpias met at his receptions Romans with republican sympathies like Cesare Angelotti and his beautiful sister, the Marchesa Domenica Attavanti, as well as Frenchmen and women living in Rome such as the banker Morette, and young painters and sculptors from the French Academy in the Palazzo Mancini. Paola was at first astonished that Azara should admit such people into his embassy, and she would have declined his invitations had not her husband felt a debt of gratitude to Azara, who had been kind to him during his first days in Rome.
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  In November of 1792, at a reception of Azara’s, the Scarpias were introduced by Morette to Hugon de Bassville, the secretary of the French ambassador in Naples, who said he had come to Rome to see the sights. Scarpia reported this to Ruffo. ‘The sights!’ expostulated the Treasurer. ‘He has been sent to organise an uprising. We have seized pamphlets smuggled in from France and a cache of arms has been found in the ghetto. But the Holy Father is terrified of the French. He has said that Bassville must be treated with courtesy and respect.’

  In the weeks which followed, Hugon de Bassville openly agitated for the overthrow of the Pope. He gave dinners at the French Embassy at which he toasted the French Republic and called upon his guests to follow the example of Brutus, who had assassinated Julius Caesar. A young French naval officer, La Flotte, was sent from Naples to assist him and, on the afternoon of Sunday 13 January 1793, Bassville and La Flotte took a drive in an open carriage along the Corso. With them were Bassville’s wife, his young son, a friend, Amaury Duval, and two servants. All wore large tricolour cockades in their hats and Duval waved a tricolour flag.

  The Romans on the crowded Corso were incensed by this display of republican emblems. Angry bystanders told the Frenchmen to remove their cockades. The request was ignored. A stone was thrown at the carriage. Bassville and La Flotte shouted insults at the crowd. A shot was fired. More stones were thrown. The coachman, alarmed, turned down the Vicolo dello Sdrucciolo and into the Palazzo Palombara, the home of the banker Morette. The coach was pursued by an enraged mob, and as the passengers descended there was a scuffle. La Flotte escaped into the palazzo, but Bassville was stabbed in the stomach and, under a fusillade of stones, carried into the police station on the via Frattina.

  The riot that had started on the Corso spread throughout Rome. The enraged crowd attacked the French Post Office, the French Academy and houses of known republican sympathisers with cries of ‘Long live the Catholic religion’ and ‘Long live the Pope’. Windows were smashed, and both the French Academy and the house of a Francophile banker, Torlonia, were set on fire. The riots continued into the Monday. A mob from Trastevere crossed the Tiber to attack the ghetto, but found it guarded by papal troops.

  Pope Pius VI sent his personal physician, Flajam, to tend to Bassville, but nothing could be done to save his life. After asking for and receiving the last sacrament of the Church, Bassville died. A funeral was held at the church of San Lorenzo in Lucina, after which the Pope provided coaches and an escort of sixty soldiers to take Bassville’s wife and son together with La Flotte back to Naples.

  4

  Like all Catholics in the eighteenth century, Baron Vitellio Scarpia di Rubaso confessed his sins at Easter, and in the last days of Lent of 1793 – soon after the killing of Bassville – he returned to the church of Santa Maria in Vallicella and Father Simone Alberti, who, having given him an introduction to the Treasurer Ruffo, was the source of his good fortune.

  Since his marriage to Paola, Scarpia had taken steps to share that good fortune with others. Sponsored by his brother-in-law, Ludovico, he had joined one of the noble confraternities that raised money for charitable institutions such as hospitals, orphanages and schools. He was a conscientious landowner and a just employer. He was devoted to his wife and respectful towards her family, and, if thoughts of other women came into his mind, he quickly expelled them. The sin that most troubled his conscience was a vague discontent. ‘I have everything a man could want,’ he said to Father Simone through the grille of the confessional. ‘I have a title, an estate, a good income, a beautiful and intelligent wife, and the two charming children. And yet I feel frustrated. I am constantly occupied, but yet feel that I have nothing to do.’

  ‘But you serve the Treasurer Ruffo.’

  ‘Indeed I do, and I owe him all. But he himself feels constrained in what he can ask me to do. He could send an obscure Sicilian to hunt down bandits but not the son-in-law of Prince di Marcisano. He deems it beneath me. And so I see to my estates, make polite conversation at receptions and play with my children while all the while Europe is in turmoil and the fiendish Jacobins conspire to conquer the world.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Father Simone, his head bowed, ‘it is too painful. It is all a terrible trial, and of course we can pray, and for me, a priest, prayer is my métier, but for you, whom God has chosen to fight for the cause of righteousness, I can see that it is hard to be unable to draw your sword . . .’

  ‘To see others fighting – the Austrians, the Prussians, the Russians, even the English . . .’

  ‘Indeed. But you are now a Roman. You are under the command of our Holy Father and are part of an army that is, in fact, no army – that, I can see, is hard to bear.’

  ‘Should I enlist in some other army that is actually fighting the French?’

  ‘No, God forbid. You are no longer a young adventurer. You have duties, responsibilities –’

  ‘To twiddle my thumbs.’

  ‘Now, perhaps, yes, to twiddle your thumbs. But the dark clouds have not dissipated. Who knows what trials lie ahead? You can at least stand firm in spirit, countering those Romans who are inclined towards republicanism and atheism. Evil actions always start with wrong-headed ideas. The horrors now taking place in France are the progeny of the conversazioni of the so-called philosophers in the drawing rooms of Paris. Has not the Church always taught that error leads to evil? Is that not why we have the Holy Inquisition? Was it not thanks to the Holy Inquisition here in Rome, in Venice, in Portugal and in Spain that the iniquitous ideas of Luther and Calvin were smothered and so we were spared the horrors of the wars of religion?

  ‘Satan is subtle,’ Father Simone went on. ‘The ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity seem to be close to those of the Gospels. Man is free – free, even to sin – that is the difference between a man and a beast – and all men are brothers, equal in the eyes of God. All this is true. But Our Lord also tells us that all authority comes from above, not below. Democracy was all very well in ancient Athens, where the citizens could gather and debate on the Pnyx. But in a nation of millions, most of whom can neither read nor write? How are they to be informed? How are they to choose? How are the impoverished to resist those who would buy their votes? Democracy means factions, and coalitions of factions, with support bought by bankers and Jews. The natural hierarchy is overturned. The dregs rise to the top and plunder the state. In Paris, grubbing lawyers and pamphleteers – Marat, Danton, Robespierre; and this man who lords it in Naples, Citizen Armand de Mackau! His mother was a governess! And the wretch who was killed – may God have mercy on his soul – Hugon, who added “de Bassville” to his name – the son of a dyer in Abbeville, a defrocked priest, the tutor to some rich Americans, then a journalist! More dregs who have risen to the top. Far better a monarch who is above factions – a good Christian, a father to his people. That is the best form of government and the only one sanctioned by God.’

  *

  Scarpia agreed with everything said by his confessor. He shared with the Romans their hatred of the republicans, be they Italian or French, and would happily have plunged his sword into Bassville’s belly. Who were these vulgar Frenchmen to tell Italians how they should live? How dare they mount this assault on a political system that the Romans had enjoyed for a thousand years? And denigrate their holy faith as superstition, seeking to persuade the people that there is no God! That the Gospels are a fable! The sacraments mumbo-jumbo! To tell the Romans to return to the values and institutions of the worshippers of Zeus!

  However, while Scarpia left the confessional reassured that the cause he served was good, he had not brought up with Father Simone the other cause of his concern and frustration – the state of his marriage to Paola. Scarpia loved his wife. He recognised that she was beautiful, amusing, original, intelligent – admirable in every way – and the love he felt for her was based on respect, fondness and, of course, desire. But did it lack passion? There had been times when Scarpia had envisaged a love for a woman that
was sublime – the kind of love portrayed in novels, plays, paintings or a piece of music such as Benedetto Marcello’s aria, ‘Quella Fiamma che m’accende’, which he had heard sung by the young soprano from the Veneto before the Pope. The girl’s rendering had for a moment made him feel that perhaps he too might one day be consumed by the flames of a transcendent love; but, when the performance was over, he remembered with embarrassment his passion for Celestina and reverted to his conviction that such passion was a weakness – all very well in art and adolescence but an unsound foundation for the concrete affinities of a grown man in real life.

  Scarpia did not dwell on the nature of love; however, there was a young French officer then serving in Milan, Henri Beyle, who would one day publish a long book on the subject based on his study of the manners and morals of the Italians at the time. Writing On Love under the name Stendhal, Beyle would describe a process he called ‘crystallisation’ whereby all the most commonplace qualities of the beloved became admirable in the eyes of the lover. This had not been the case with Scarpia. The way in which Paola cocked her head in conversation, a little like a parrot, or her habit of raising herself up and down on her toes with her back to the mantel as if stretching the calves of her legs – these and many other mannerisms would have become delightful in the eyes of a lover. Scarpia found them endearing but not delightful; her father, whom she resembled, also cocked his head like a parrot.

  However, Scarpia’s love for Paola was now far more than an affinity between a man and a woman: it encompassed his powerful feelings for his whole family. When she had become pregnant, he had seen it as a matter for the women of the household; but, when presented with his son Pietro, he had been overwhelmed with novel and powerful emotions – pride, delight, and gratitude to the wife who had endured such protracted agony to bring forth his child.