A Venetian Affair

by Andrea Di Robilant

  Huddled inside the crowded coach, Giustiniana was oblivious to her physical discomfort. As the city walls of Padua gradually disappeared from view, she drifted into melancholy thoughts. She was leaving the world she had lived in all her life. And she was leaving the man who for so long had been at the center of that world as her lover, her best friend, her guiding hand. As the carriage barreled down the road, she fixed her mind on Andrea to keep herself from feeling lost.

  When the negotiations on the marriage contract had collapsed, Mrs. Anna had decided to leave Venice at once and seek a new life for herself and her children in London. What would be the point of staying on in the wake of the scandal? Giustiniana’s prospects of finding a husband in the Republic were ruined. And Mrs. Anna’s past, which she had fought so hard to bury and forget, had suddenly resurfaced to humiliate the whole family. So she had packed her belongings and uprooted her children with the same determination she had shown in the past, as she had struggled to preserve the respectability Sir Richard had bequeathed to her upon his death.

  She was in a hurry now to cross the Alps before winter set in. The onset of the war would make their journey even more uncertain than it might otherwise have been, since they would be traveling through France as British subjects—and France and Great Britain were enemies. But Mrs. Anna counted on the good auspices of the Abbé de Bernis, the former French ambassador to Venice who was now foreign minister. Once they were safely in London, Lord Holderness, the children’s guardian, would introduce them to their English relatives and help them settle down. He might possibly arrange a presentation to Court. Seven years after Sir Richard’s death, his family was going home.

  During their final days in Venice, Andrea and Giustiniana had been inseparable. Mrs. Anna’s hostility toward Andrea had mellowed as the separation neared, and she had allowed him to take the boat trip from Venice to Padua with the family. In Padua, where the Memmos owned a large property, he had escorted Giustiniana around town as last-minute preparations were made for the trip. Andrea had even taken his meals with the Wynnes in an atmosphere of general reconciliation. After his final, wrenching farewell with Giustiniana, he had galloped ahead of the carriage to wave one last time from the bridge at the Gate of Santa Sofia. But Giustiniana had already withdrawn into her shell.

  The Wynnes arrived at their inn in Vicenza very late that night. Giustiniana felt drained and completely disoriented. After a light dinner she went to her room and wrote to Andrea about the confusion in her heart:

  Mon cher frère,

  Where am I, sweet Memmo? How awful is my pain! What desperation! Oh I do love you, alas; and I cannot cease telling you even in the first moments of our separation! How I have penetrated your being. . . . How I have felt! Ah, there is no point in telling you. I am desperate. . . . I did not have the strength to call you back when you drew away from me, so I followed you with my soul. I heard you stopped at the Bridge of Santa Sofia, but I did not see you.

  From the very beginning of their new life apart, Giustiniana addressed her letters to “Mon cher frère,” my dear brother—a semantic device designed to put some distance between them and somehow ease the disentanglement of their feelings. She was quick to admit it was a weak subterfuge: “I will call you mon cher frère, but you will still be everything to me.”

  In reality this new form of address masked a deeper change in their relationship, which had actually occurred a few weeks before her departure from Venice. Giustiniana never spoke very openly or clearly about the matter in her letters to Andrea; she never mentioned a name or a place or a specific date. But she said enough to leave us in no possible doubt. At some point in 1758, either shortly before the revelations about Mrs. Anna or, more probably, in their aftermath, she had tired of the endless waiting game. She had tired of being isolated, tired of being shuttled back and forth between Venice and Padua, tired of being forcefully kept away from the man she loved. For a moment she had even tired of Andrea and his seemingly futile machinations. She had felt the utter hopelessness of her situation just as she had two years before, after their dramatic failure with Consul Smith. And for a short period of time— she called it her “moment of weakness”—she had given in to the gallantry of another man.

  For all we know it was a brief affair, probably a matter of a few weeks. Her feelings for Andrea had not died, however, and when her fling was over she had gone back to him more in love than she had been in a long time. Andrea himself had learned of the deception only later that summer. After Mrs. Anna’s sudden decision to drag the family to London, Giustiniana had confessed her betrayal to Andrea, believing, in a contorted sort of way, that by painting herself as fickle and weak she would somehow diminish “the terrible pain” he would feel at their separation.

  Andrea had forgiven Giustiniana—he was never a resentful man. But their relationship was not the same after her “cruel and spontaneous confession.” Giustiniana had allowed someone else to come between them, and this shadow had lingered on. There had been lies, and then there had been remorse. But even after Andrea had forgiven her, even after their tearful farewell in Padua, Giustiniana continued to damn herself. “I despise my life and I despise myself even more,” she wrote to him that first night in Vicenza, contemplating “the unhappy combination of events that has ruined me in your eyes.”

  Despite the changes in their relationship, Andrea and Giustiniana were still very much together when the Wynnes left Venice in the autumn. They saw themselves as a couple and intended to meet soon. They still talked about spending their life together—one way or another. In fact, they were already working on a new scheme.

  Their most urgent goal was to thwart Mrs. Anna’s plan to settle in London. Giustiniana had agreed with Andrea to try to extend their stay in Paris for as long as possible and hopefully to avoid reaching London at all. In Paris, Giustiniana was to aim her powers of seduction at Alexandre Le Riche de La Pouplinière, an aging widower, great music lover, and one of the richest fermiers généraux, the famously wealthy French tax collectors. It looked very much like a variation on the plan they had tried unsuccessfully on Consul Smith two years earlier.

  Monsieur de La Pouplinière had been Andrea’s idea. Exactly a decade before, the old tax collector had been at the center of the notorious scandale de la cheminée. The Duc de Richelieu, a powerful figure at the court of King Louis XV and a flamboyant womanizer, had seduced Monsieur de La Pouplinière’s beautiful and much younger wife. The duke and the tax collector happened to be neighbors in Paris. To facilitate the secret encounters with his new lover, the duke had had a secret passageway built in a huge fireplace that led directly into Madame de La Pouplinière’s music room. The tax collector eventually discovered the ploy and banished his wife from his household. The episode had caused a huge scandal at the time—as much because of the affair itself as because of what was perceived as La Pouplinière’s unnecessarily cruel treatment of his wife. The fermier général had never remarried while his wife was alive, but she had recently died and Andrea had heard from his Venetian friends in Paris that the old man, now well into his sixties, was looking for a new young wife.

  Monsieur de La Pouplinière was probably not uppermost in Giustiniana’s mind the day she left Padua. But she had gone along with the idea when Andrea had discussed it before her departure. As at the beginning of their relationship, perhaps on account of the guilt she still felt for her “moment of weakness,” she was again deferring to his judgment. She promised absolute transparency: “Let God separate us forever if I do not tell you everything that happens to me. And you must do the same with me even at the cost of hurting me.” She yearned to please him in the hope of possessing him again completely. “You will know everything, and I shall win back your tenderness—you will see . . .”

  Yet for all her resolutions, for all her valiant efforts to harness her feelings for Andrea, Giustiniana had little control over the sheer sadness that kept assailing her. If only she could give in to her emotions from time to time . . .
“Your tenderness, Memmo! Oh God, may I speak to you this way? Do you allow me to do so? I have not shed a tear after those I shed with you in Padua, but I am immersed in desperation. Oh God! What will happen to me, and to you, Memmo? . . . I can only speak to you of love. Allow me to surrender for a few moments to my excessive feelings.”

  After a sleepless first night away from Andrea, she added this rambling postscript to her letter as she waited for their little convoy to get started again:

  I wept a great deal [all during the night] and was inconsolable. I made a thousand plans to go back to you if you do not find a way to your Giustiniana. What misery is mine! You are always on my mind, and at this very moment I am kissing your little portrait. Let me speak to you about my passion. I shall be wiser when I will have persuaded myself that I am far from you; but will I ever be able not to talk to you about my passion? You allowed me to talk about it again, and now I feel it with such power that it is impossible for me to bury it. May I hope, mon cher frère, to find the words ‘I love you’ in the letter I will receive from you in Turin or Lyon? Write long letters to me, be my friend always, love me as much as you can. I owe you so much. I feel close to you in all those things to which my soul will always be sensitive. May God give me a fortune so that I can run of to live wherever you may be. . . . Farewell, my love. Take care of yourself for me, take care of yourself for Giustiniana, who is so unhappy now but will soon be near you and happy again.

  Andrea and Giustiniana found themselves in each other’s arms much sooner than they could possibly have expected. A short distance outside Vicenza the axle of the carriage in which the Wynnes were traveling cracked and the vehicle crashed to the ground, damaging the luggage carriage as well. All the passengers came out of the wreckage unscathed, if a little shaky. Back at the inn, a dejected Zandiri informed the Wynnes that fixing the carriages could take as much as four days.

  Giustiniana seized her chance: she summoned a messenger and dashed off a note to Andrea, who was still in Padua on business, telling him to join her in Vicenza immediately. “My mother thanks the Virgin for having saved us,” she quipped. “I thank her because I am not moving from here.” He could justify his sudden appearance in Vicenza, she added, by telling Mrs. Anna that having heard of the accident he wished to make sure Giustiniana and the rest of the family were all right. “If I get to see you again, I will certainly believe in miracles. Let me say no more. I want the lackey to fly to you immediately.”

  Andrea arrived at the inn the next day, wearing an appropriately worried expression, and inquired about the Wynnes. Mrs. Anna was resting, and she exploded when she heard that Andrea was downstairs, cursing him and even accusing him of having somehow orchestrated the entire incident. Zandiri, who was already beside himself because of the delay, slammed the door of his room in Andrea’s face and refused to speak to him. Not to be outdone by Mrs. Anna, Zandiri then threatened to kill Andrea, who had already prudently retreated to a nearby inn. Giustiniana sent her lover a dramatic report of what had happened after he had quit the scene:

  A firestorm, my dear Memmo, a terrible firestorm. My mother is so furious she says she wants to notify the authorities. . . . She treated me abominably and I suffered in a thousand different ways, but when all the composure I had in me was finally exhausted I gave in to my anger. . . . [Zandiri] said loudly that he wanted to knife you. . . . I told him you would have him caned very soon, and he answered he would have you caned first. Everyone in the next room heard each word, as there were no other noises in the house. We cannot see each other here anymore. Go to Venice, take legal action, and, if you can, try to arrange things in such a way that [Zandiri] will be arrested tomorrow. He did threaten to kill you.

  Andrea was utterly unprepared for the violent reaction his appearance had provoked—after all, Mrs. Anna and he had parted amicably in Padua only two days before. Then again, she had always been a difficult woman. But Zandiri’s behavior really incensed him. Andrea would teach him a lesson, give him a scare he would not forget. The law was on his side: threatening the life of a prominent Venetian patrician was a serious offense, and for once Andrea had every intention of using the prerogatives of his rank. Besides, the bewildered clientele of the inn had overheard everything. Zandiri had sealed his own fate.

  However, rather than taking legal action in Venice, as Giustiniana had pressed him to do, Andrea decided to seek justice on the mainland, away from the city gossips. He asked Giustiniana to provide him with signed statements from three patricians who had been present at the scene in the inn and had heard Zandiri’s curses against Andrea, as well as sworn depositions by several servants attesting to the fact that Andrea had not provoked Zandiri—had not even been given the chance to speak to him. Once Giustiniana supplied the evidence, Andrea contacted the all-powerful Venetian rappresentante in Verona, who in turn ordered the chief of police to follow Andrea’s instructions to the letter. In effect, the rappresentante, himself a member of the ruling oligarchy and a friend of the Memmo family, allowed Andrea to take justice into his own hands.

  Mrs. Anna spent most of the following day in church. In her absence, the two lovers had ample opportunity to plan their legal offensive together. Brazenly, they even visited some of the architectural marvels of Vicenza, including Andrea Palladio’s famous Teatro Olimpico. It was a good day, one of their best in a long time:

  Seldom have we had a chance to be together as long and as sweetly as today. Alas, this good fortune comes to me now, ensuring that the pain of separation will be stronger still! It is my fate. . . . But oh my God, I cannot tell you more because my mother is calling me now. Tomorrow I shall be at the Due Torri [in Verona]. You will spy on us, I am sure, and I will be told everything. . . . I hope our time together will not be bad there either. Meanwhile, give the go-ahead to our great coup, and have a good trip. God! We are rushing simultaneously toward new bliss and new danger! If you love me, be passionate about everything, and fear nothing.

  It felt as if their conspiratorial days were back. Secret messengers shuttled between them as they prepared the “great coup”: Zandiri would be arrested and thrown into jail. Giustiniana egged Andrea on, encouraged him to use all the powers in his hands to finally rid them of the “scoundrel.”

  As soon as Andrea left for Verona that evening, however, doubts began to creep into Giustiniana’s mind, for she and her family now faced the prospect of a long and difficult journey without the protection of a man. Suddenly she wasn’t so sure: “If [Zandiri] comes with us it will be hell, and if he stays we will have to deal with a thousand dangers.”

  That night a messenger sent by Giustiniana went looking for Andrea “all over Verona,” shaking guards out of their slumber and even forcing the deputy mayor from his bed to deliver an express letter to him. On the envelope, Giustiniana had used their old cipher to write:

  Don’t be amazed, just laugh.

  Sleepily, Andrea read on:

  I cannot be entirely evil. I have worries and fears. My wish for revenge is giving in to my good heart, and I am about to ask you that yours give in as well for love of me. I foresee a thousand troubles if you have [Zandiri] detained. My mother would be so furious she would be capable of abandoning the family and ruining us all. Memmo, give in to me, give up your resentment to your Giustiniana, who beseeches you. Let me leave with a renewed admiration for your soul.

  Andrea did not want to leave Zandiri rotting indefinitely in some godforsaken prison of the Venetian Republic. He only wanted to give the man a scare. A public apology, he reassured Giustiniana, was all that was needed to grant Zandiri’s release. Meanwhile, the carriages in Vicenza had been repaired, and the next day, October 7, the Wynne party arrived in Verona and took up lodgings at the Due Torri, not far from where Andrea was staying.

  The lovers managed to steal another full day together, roaming the streets and squares of the town while Mrs. Anna attended a succession of church services and Zandiri took care of travel arrangements. Before curling into bed, Giustiniana w
ished Andrea a good night:

  Sleep well, my heart, for you will need it after all the walking we did. I could learn so much traveling with you! You’ve seen everything, you know everything, and you are so good at pointing out things and drawing distinctions. . . . I love you, yes, I do love you. Oh God! How much there is to say—more than I even dare to wish or say. . . . Good night. . . . Dream of me. . . . Love me much. Will you always let me ask you to love me?

  The Wynne party started early the next morning on the road to Brescia, most of them unaware of the trap that Andrea and Giustiniana had laid for Zandiri in what was then the last major city of the Venetian State before entering the Duchy of Milan. They spent the night in the small town of Desenzano and arrived in Brescia the following afternoon. The two lovers kept in regular contact during the trip through brief express notes sent from the stations along the road; it was important to synchronize the steps that were to lead to what Giustiniana, perhaps not fully anticipating the seriousness of the matter, was now calling “the great prank.”

  The Wynnes had barely settled into their lodgings in Brescia and were still unpacking when loud noises were heard in the foyer: police officers had arrived at the inn, shouting orders and creating great alarm among the guests. They summoned Zandiri downstairs and, after questioning him briefly, dragged him away.

  For all her conniving, Giustiniana was suddenly frightened.

  God only knows what is going on. I tremble for my own sake as well. My mother is spewing fire at this moment. . . . If you love me, Memmo, try to be as prudent as you can. I never thought things would take such a turn. They tell me [Zandiri] is in jail!

  That afternoon word came back to the Wynnes confirming that Zandiri had been roughly interrogated by the police and locked up in the Castello, Brescia’s intimidating fortress in the Old City. Mrs. Anna became incandescent when she realized that her traveling companion would not be returning to the inn that night. She accused Andrea of acting out of spite and vowed to expose him in Venice. Then she turned on her daughter.