A Venetian Affair

by Andrea Di Robilant

  The challenge of seducing a rich old man who stubbornly refused to remarry and over whom so many Parisian women were fighting appealed to Giustiniana’s vanity. She had done her home-work, and she knew she was stepping onto a treacherous stage. But she also knew her strengths—her charm, her vivacity, her youth— and a part of her was eager to test them outside her usual circle of Russian and Venetian friends. “Who knows?” she gamely wrote to Andrea. “In the end, for the sake of doing you a favor, I might succeed in moving him more than all these other women have.”

  The long-sought-after invitation also made her deeply apprehensive. This was not entirely a game; it was a scheme that could change her life forever. She knew herself well enough to foresee that once she started, she would probably play her hand to the end. The seduction of Consul Smith had been a similar proposition, but then she had had Andrea to back her up. Now she was alone, on unfamiliar terrain, facing a cast of complete strangers.

  She was also three years older—wiser, perhaps, but also a little more oppressed by the sense of time passing quickly by:

  Ah, Memmo, tell me where those happy hours have gone? Where are you, my true heart? . . . When will your head and your heart be joined to mine? If only you knew how much I love you and how unhappy I am! Nothing moves in my heart anymore unless I think of you. I shall soon be twenty-two years old, and you know what it means for a woman to be twenty-two. . . . Half my life, or in any case half of the better part of life, has gone by. How have I lived it? . . . Only you know everything about my life, and I would be so happy if it could end with you. Farewell, my Memmo. I shall never be happy if I cannot join you somewhere, somehow. Love me as hard as you can, and remember your truest and most unhappy friend. Farewell, I embrace you a thousand times.

  It took Giustiniana less than a month to ensnare La Pouplinière. These are the accounts she gave Andrea of her success:

  Paris, January 22

  Mon cher frère, . . . I went to La Pouplinière’s on Monday. . . . There was quite a crowd, and the master of the house was very sweet with us. The concert he gave was in our honor, and I must say it was the best orchestra in the world. I have never heard a better cello or a better oboe. The hautbois des forêts and the clarinets—wind instruments that are not much used in our parts—are admirable. I praised with honesty, I hope I praised with grace. I looked at him with great composure, and I never spoke excessively, though I could have spoken more. He in turn praised the precision with which I judged what I heard and what I saw; I am told he never pays this kind of compliment. With great courtesy he invited us to the regular Saturday concert. What do you say of my beginning? But enough of this. . . . It is too early to justify your hopes. . . . Farsetti came to see us on Tuesday and stayed all day. He brought me a book of French ariettas. . . . I spent a good deal of time learning a few of them well: if I want to please the old man, I will have to have him ask me to hum a few French songs.

  Paris, January 29

  Mon cher frère,

  . . . Saturday I went to the great concert at La Pouplinière’s and there were lots of people. He was rude to everyone but very sweet with me and invited me for dinner on Wednesday. Let me handle this, but you must be patient. . . . Would you believe how many compliments I received at La Pouplinière’s on Saturday? Two ladies sent the ambassador of Naples here to tell me a thousand things. . . . I will wait for you here: we shall live together whatever way we may. Do you have the courage for that? . . . Come laugh with me about all these crazy people. . . . And don’t stop loving me, my heart.

  Paris, February 12

  Mon cher frère,

  Listen: I have many things to tell you. I see my luck approaching; but since your insistence has brought me to where I am, I want your advice to count. My dearest friend, my heart and my soul are always with you. . . . I stayed home until Wednesday, when I had dinner at La Pouplinière’s. There I noticed that my innocent e forts had touched his heart because his attentions toward me were considerable. . . . Friday he paid us a visit, a favor he never bestows, and Saturday we went out to Passy with a huge crowd. It is a large house, beautiful and full of those comforts that are so scarce in Italy and that you are so fond of. It is divided into small apartments, with a splendid salon. We walked in the garden, which is even more beautiful than the house but not very green. We left Passy, and we had lunch at his house in Paris around one o’clock. So many attentions! . . . In short: he told me he did not want me to go to London under any circumstances, saying he would die at the thought that I should leave him; he asked me to stay in his house, provided I was willing to live with his sister-in-law here in Paris, and promised he would make me happy. You can imagine how little I liked his proposition; but we must see where it leads. . . . One must raise the stakes and then be willing to take half. So I mentioned a few problems, but I did not say no. . . . He is an extremely generous man. . . . What I fear, though, is his passion for arranging marriages. He has a nephew who looks like a chaise porter. . . . I’d rather marry the old man. What do you think? Would I be fulfilling your project with honor? Enough: you can trust me. . . . The next day his secretary came to see me, and after lengthy preambles he said he was sure his master wouldoffer me a life annuity of between eight and ten thousand francs and his house to live in if I stayed in Paris. You can imagine my surprise! And my answer! I pretended I did not believe the proposition came from his master, whose sensitive way of thinking I went on to praise, even though I knew perfectly well that it did. I pointed out to him in the most delicate manner that perhaps he did not realize the kind of person I was or my station in life, and at that I let the matter drop, though I did mention, in passing, that if I wished to marry the way an honest girl like myself should, I hoped that good and noble proposals would not be lacking in my father’s country. We’ll see what e fect these words will have. . . . Meanwhile, I’m rather happy with myself, and I hope you are as well. . . . I hope I’m being clear despite the rush with which I’m writing you; but since you know my heart I’m sure you understand me perfectly. . . . Farewell, love me. All the handsome men I see are not worth your little finger.

  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, accus
ing 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 f
rom 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.”