Baron Scarpia did not return to Rome with Naselli. Paola was disappointed. She had, on his behalf, and thinking of the interests of their son Pietro, successfully reclaimed the estate at Rubaso. She had hoped that he might be grateful to her for that, and even return to live with her under the same roof at the Villa Larunda. She was now over thirty years old. Her children were growing up; soon Pietro’s voice would break and they would be looking for a husband for Francesca. Although it was only two years or so since Paola had ‘succumbed’ to Ringel, and an even shorter period since she had been the mistress of Jouve, she looked back on both with some embarrassment, which, in Paola, was akin to remorse.
Many different factors go to create a frame of mind. With legitimacy now in the ascendant, it seemed sensible for Citizeness Marcisano to become Princess di Marcisano once again – Princess di Marcisano, but also Baroness Scarpia di Rubaso; and with middle age on the horizon, it seemed appropriate that she should enter it on the arm of a husband. Of course, a marriage can be annulled, but Paola looked at other men and realised that there was none she preferred to Scarpia. She told herself that she had never, in fact, disliked him; that her liaisons with Ringel and Jouve could be ascribed to a kind of fever which women sometimes catch at a certain stage in life; and once it had run its course leaves them wiser – aware of the advantages of remaining with the father of their children and the love of their youth.
There was a further factor which she toyed with in her reflections: Scarpia’s success as a general in Cardinal Ruffo’s campaign against the French. She looked back beyond the Don Quixote of the Battle of Faenza, back beyond ‘Ruffo’s sbirro’, to the dashing young officer who had captured the bandit Ponzio Adena and whom she had chosen to marry, and thought that perhaps she had been right to recognise something heroic in the Sicilian and insist upon his new blood to revitalise the stock of the Marcisanos. No one now, seeing him decorated, enriched and ennobled for his feats of valour on the field, could dismiss him as a sbirro.
Paola knew that Scarpia might not return. The lands he had been given in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies were greater than those at Rubaso; and clearly there was more glory to be enjoyed in Naples and Palermo than there would be in Rome. No doubt there were beautiful women – and younger women – who would be more than willing to share his bed, and she did not deceive herself into imagining that he might be yearning for her; but she knew that Scarpia, too, was approaching middle age and that, while young men might want to make love to a woman as an end in itself, older men warm towards the by-product of that youthful desire – namely their children.
Pietro was now twelve years old – slender and handsome like his father but with the softer manner of his uncle Ludovico. He had picked up the Marcisanos’ sense of election from his grandfather and uncle, but Paola could see his father in the occasional glint in his eye and in the way in which, when riding or fencing, his body became taut like the string of a bow. She could see what Pietro could not see – that his languid uncle and crotchety grandfather were unsatisfactory models of manhood. Pietro never spoke about his father; he understood that he had had to flee from the French and had accepted that they could not follow; but when the subject of Scarpia’s triumphs came up at table, she could see a discreet blush of pride suffuse his cheeks.
Francesca, now ten years old, was quite unlike her mother or father and was thought to resemble the old prince’s aunt Matilda. She was small, cheerful and utterly confident in her right to dominate the entire Marcisano household. She was far cannier than Paola had been at that age, managing to glean from the cooks and maidservants all the gossip about her mother and her friends. When Jouve first came to the Villa Larunda, and was introduced by Paola to her children, Pietro was mute and looked embarrassed, but Francesca had asked in a by-the-way tone of voice: ‘Are you descended from a walrus?’
Jouve had taken the question in good heart. ‘No, not a walrus,’ he had said, stroking his whiskers, ‘a lion!’ And he gave a roar and the loud laugh with which the Marcisanos were to become familiar. Francesca had not laughed or even smiled. ‘You don’t sound like a lion,’ she said, ‘you sound like a donkey.’ From then on, the children always referred to Jouve as ‘the donkey’.
When it became clear to Paola, in the course of the autumn of 1799, that Scarpia might be staying in Sicily not for the attractions of that place but because Rome held painful memories, and that he might believe both his wife and children to be irretrievably estranged, she thought of writing to him, but could not think of how to put what she wanted to say. She decided instead to order two miniature portraits of the children, which somehow or other she would arrange to fall into his hands. She commissioned a talented miniaturist, a friend of Cavaradossi’s, and by the end of November she had the two enchanting likenesses set in little gold-and-enamel lockets.
In Paola’s mind, recovering her husband and the father of her children was a necessary part of the reordering of her life. However, the cornerstone of that reordering was not a reconciliation with Scarpia but a reconciliation with God. Paola was a Catholic, and no amount of cavorting around Liberty trees or posing as a pagan goddess or venerating Eros in the arms of French lovers would alter the impress made on her soul by a convent education. Moreover, Catholicism was a religion perfectly attuned to her present mood of regret. The forgiveness of sins was an article of the Apostles’ Creed.
The Marcisanos had a tame chaplain to whom the members of the family routinely confessed, but Paola did not respect him – it was more than his job was worth to give harsh penances or refuse absolution. For the profound confession she had in mind – a baring of her soul – she wanted a priest who would not be intimidated by her rank or afraid to chastise her. She remembered that Scarpia had told her how his own life had taken the turn that eventually led to their marriage after confessing to the Oratorian, Father Simone Alberti. Paola had known Father Simone – they were related many times over – but she had been too afraid of his severity to confess to him before. Now, she wanted severity; she felt she had sinned and wanted not to be excused but punished and then forgiven. There was a further consideration at the back of her mind. Father Simone might be used to persuade Scarpia to return under the conjugal roof.
*
Father Simone Alberti was an experienced confessor and that experience had taught him that repentance is sometimes adulterated by worldly concerns: the Prodigal Son, after all, had only returned to his father because he was hungry. Therefore, when he received a note saying that Princess Paola di Marcisano would like to make her confession to him, he realised that he would need God’s help to discern the sincerity or otherwise of her repentance. He knew, as did all in Rome, of her embrace of Jacobinism and her liaison with a French brigadier. He knew too that to be fully accepted back into society under the new Bourbon regime she must be seen to be reconciled with the Church. But cynicism in a confessor was itself a sin and so Father Simone, when Paola entered the confessional, was ready to give her the benefit of the doubt.
‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.’
The man who sits in obscurity behind the grille of a confessional, listening to the penitent’s list of transgressions, acts in persona Christi and while as a man he is ready to comfort and counsel a soul in distress, he is trained to beware of letting human sympathy affect his moral judgement – a failing all too common with a repentant woman. It was not that the rustle of silk, the waft of rich scent, the dim outline of a gentle face and large, lowered eyes could provoke in Father Simone improper desires – even as a young man, mortification of the flesh had first tamed and then killed his sexual instinct – but he loved women and was always ready to make allowances for a nature that he saw as distinct to that of man. Eve had been created by God after He had offered Adam other creatures as a companion, and so was herself in a sense a creature from the animal kingdom – a creature with a soul, but less governed by reason than by instinct, and so less responsible for those sins which stem from the exigencies of the
species.
To an educated woman at the time – a Madame de Staël, a Mary Wollstonecraft or an Eleonara Pimentel – such an attitude would have seemed demeaning, but Father Simone’s formation had taken place when the views of Aristotle and Aquinas on the irrationality of women had been widely accepted. Dom Simone had not known sexual love, but he had vicariously experienced it through the tearful revelations from the other side of the grille. He understood that God intended it to bind a husband and a wife, but he knew that few of the married women who confessed to him had loved or desired the husbands chosen for them by their parents. He knew that just because, in the words of St Paul, woman was made for man and not man for woman, a sexual passion could grow so strong that it appeared to be the whole point of her existence, and so to abandon it a form of death. Of course, it was not the point of her existence; that was salvation, and disordered love jeopardised that salvation; but death and the world to come were dim and unconvincing prospects to a woman whose body yearned for her lover and tingled at the thought of his touch.
Father Simone therefore listened to Paola’s account of her affairs with Ringel and Jouve with a sympathetic ear. He accepted with little further interrogation her assurance that she repented of both liaisons and would, with the help of God, never commit such sins again. The Oratorian was more severe – far more severe – when it came to her collaboration with the atheist Jacobins, failing to perform her Easter duties and appearing as a pagan goddess at their blasphemous ceremonials. What an example to set to the people! She, a Marcisano! It was one thing to endanger her own salvation through her sins against chastity, but quite another to cause scandal and lead others astray. How many young women may have abandoned the sacraments, perhaps even their faith, after seeing Paola dancing around a Liberty tree? ‘Certainly, as our first pontiff, St Peter, wrote in his Epistle, love covers many a sin,’ said Father Simone, ‘and the Church has always been understanding of human weaknesses. But when such weaknesses are harnessed to unbelief! When we turn from the worship of Jehovah to that of Baal, the god of fertility; for what is the Jacobin’s Liberty tree but the phallus – the maypoles of the German barbarians or the high ground spoken of by the prophet Ezekiel? You have piled whoring on whoring, and built yourself a mound at the beginning of every road and a high place at every crossroads, says the prophet, and again, You have laid down for those big-membered neighbours, the Egyptians –’
‘He was French,’ said Paola.
‘My dear child, I was merely quoting from Scripture to illustrate the Lord’s anger at the adulterous Jerusalem. The Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God. But remember also the prophet Isaiah: Do not be afraid, you will not be put to shame, do not be dismayed, you will not be disgraced . . . Does a man cast off the wife of his youth? says your God. In excess of anger, for a moment, I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love I have taken pity on you, says the Lord, your redeemer.’
‘Do you think,’ asked Paola softly, ‘that a man might be persuaded to take back the wife of his youth?’
‘A man? You mean . . .’ The priest hesitated as if he had forgotten for a moment to whom Paola was married. ‘Yes, Baron Scarpia.’ A further hesitation. Then: ‘He must take you back. You will be cleansed of your sins. If God forgives you, then he must forgive you. But, is he in Rome?’
‘No. He remains in Palermo.’
‘Of course, he is a Sicilian. They have strong passions. But there is goodness in Scarpia, I know, and after all nothing is impossible for God.’
‘I pray every day,’ said Paola, ‘or at least most days, that he will find it in his heart to forgive me.’
‘In his heart. Yes, he must, for Our Lord says we must forgive those who have injured us not seven times but seventy-seven times, and we must forgive them from our heart.’
‘I thought, perhaps,’ said Paola, ‘that if you were to write to him and say that you knew that I longed for him to return . . .’
‘Of course.’
‘It is not just for me, but for our children. They have gone too long without their father.’
‘The children, yes.’
‘I have two miniature portraits and thought if he was to see how fine they now were, it might tempt him to return.’
‘Not simply tempt him,’ said Father Simone, ‘but remind him that he has responsibilities under God, and that there are things more important than wounded pride. The forgiveness of sins is an article of our faith: Confiteor in remissionem peccatorum. For those who are truly repentant, as I know you are, my dear child, there is the warmest welcome back into the arms of the Father.’
Paola made her act of contrition. The words were those she had been taught at the convent and she wondered if they were a sufficient expression of repentance for adult sins; but they seemed to satisfy Father Simone. The penance he gave her, however, was adult and severe – not because of her adultery, but because of her political apostasy, which was so much worse. She was to make a month’s retreat in the convent of the discalced Carmelites, wearing a scratchy horsehair habit, drinking only water, eating only bread and vegetables, and joining in their Office, starting with matins at four in the morning. Paola bowed her head to denote her meek acceptance of such a well-deserved punishment. Then Father Simone made the sign of the cross with his raised hand saying: ‘Ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis, in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen,’ and Paola left the confessional shriven and pure.
3
Towards the end of October 1799, at ten in the morning, Vitellio Scarpia was sitting in the library of the villa in Bagheria reading the gazette fetched by Spoletta from Palermo when a servant brought him a packet that bore the seal of the Oratory in Rome. When the servant had left the room, Scarpia broke the seal and opened the packet. Inside was a letter and, wrapped in silk, two closed lockets of enamel and gold. Scarpia opened the lockets and saw in one the portrait of an enchanting young man and in the other an equally delightful likeness of a girl. He then turned to the letter.
My dear son in Christ,
I am sending you at the request of your wife these depictions of your dear children, Pietro and Francesca. It is now almost two years since they have seen their father and she deems that they suffer as a result. She would have you either summon them to join you in Palermo or return to take your rightful place in Rome. She hesitates to write to you herself; she feels she is not worthy of your thoughts and feelings; however, I would be failing in my pastoral duties were I not to inform you that she greatly regrets her offences over the past two years – offences against God and against you, her husband. She begs forgiveness and again it is incumbent upon me as a priest to remind you that mercy is at the heart of our Catholic religion. Time and again in the Holy Gospel Our Lord asks us to forgive those who sin against us as he forgives our sins against Him: dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Do not let Satan harden your heart. Forgive as Christ forgave the woman taken in adultery and think of the rich reward you will receive in the love and respect of your children.
Pax Domini, Simone Alberti
Scarpia sat in the autumn sun, light filtering through the windows, with Father Simone’s letter on the desk and the two open lockets in his left hand. He gazed at the portraits of his children and longed to be with them – to hold them, to embrace them, to look into their eyes. He imagined himself back in the Villa Larunda and wondered whether it would be possible to return. Or should he summon them to Palermo? The children, perhaps, but not Paola. King Ferdinand and Queen Maria Carolina would never receive a former Jacobin, whether or not she was repentant and at peace with the Church.
A month before, General Acton had asked Scarpia to go to Rome with General Naselli. Scarpia had declined. He had assumed that Paola and his two children had left the city with her French lover. When he had later learned that the lover was dead and that Paola and his children had remained in Rome, he still hesitated. Did she want him back? Did he want live with her once again under the
same roof? Scarpia had been held in Sicily by indecision. He had abandoned the idea of finding another wife. Paola had been faithless, but that was nothing unusual in her circle and, if Father Simone was to be believed, she now regretted what she had done. God demanded that he forgive her; not to do so would in itself be a sin. And there were their two children, who yearned for him as he yearned for them.
Later that day, Scarpia told Spoletta that he had decided to return to Rome.
‘To Rubosa?’
‘No. To the Villa Larunda.’
‘To live with the princess?’
‘And my children.’
Spoletta glanced at the letter from Father Simone open on Scarpia’s desk, and then at the lockets in Scarpia’s hands. Scarpia held them up for him to see. ‘Pietro and Francesca. Aren’t they enchanting?’
Spoletta studied them silently, then said: ‘One never knows what comes from the skill of the artist.’
Scarpia laughed. ‘All the more reason to see them in the flesh.’
‘And the Princess Paola?’
‘She is their mother.’
Spoletta said nothing.
‘And my wife.’
‘Of course.’ He looked back at the letter. Scarpia saw his glance but did not offer to let him read it.
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