Scarpia

by Piers Paul Read

  In the end, it was Spoletta who told him in a matter-of-fact tone of voice that his wife was ‘being fucked by the French painter when he takes time off from fucking her whore friend di Pozzo’. They were in the guardroom at the Quirinale Palace. Scarpia’s face went pale. His mouth felt dry. ‘That’s impossible,’ he said. ‘The picture was finished a month ago.’

  ‘Apparently there’s another of your wife as a half-naked nymph.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Everyone knows. And I’ve followed her coach. She goes to his studio two or three times a week.’

  ‘It’s impossible,’ said Scarpia, the words spoken from his lips contradicting the feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  ‘All women are whores,’ said Spoletta. ‘The princess is no exception.’

  Scarpia sat down on the bench that ran along the wall of the guardroom. He hid his face in his hands. He did not listen to Spoletta’s coarse philosophising on the nature of women, but tried to sort out his own thoughts. All at once he understood the smirks, the odd looks, Paola’s radiance on some afternoons, her lifelessness when they made love. He felt anger rise within him as if he had taken a deep breath of rancour to fill his lungs; but almost at once the anger subsided and left only sadness in its wake. He felt at once an impulse to return to Sicily – never to see his faithless wife again; but then he remembered his children and his duties as an officer in the pontifical army. Should the man who had faced a phalanx of French dragoons flee from a domestic skirmish? Così fan tutte. If he were now to show that he minded, the smirks would become outright laughter. The jealous Sicilian would become a figure of fun.

  Scarpia could play the role of a Stoic if that was what the circumstances required. On his return to the Villa Larunda that evening, he greeted his wife courteously and, meaning to avoid looking into her eyes for fear of what his expression would reveal, glanced at her and realised what he had noticed but never acknowledged to himself – that for many months Paola had in fact avoided looking at him.

  They dined, more or less in silence, and after the servants had withdrawn, and they were sitting alone, Scarpia said to Paola: ‘I understand that you are sitting for a second portrait by Monsieur Ringel.’

  Paola blushed. ‘Most certainly not.’

  ‘It is common knowledge.’

  ‘Well, certainly, he started something when I was there with the children and now I occasionally look in so that he can finish it off.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘You would have made a fuss.’

  ‘Is it a portrait?’

  ‘More . . . you know . . . something from antiquity.’

  ‘You pose as what?’

  ‘Larunda.’

  ‘Clothed?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And does he sleep with you as he does with his other models?’

  Paola blushed more deeply and stood up. ‘Really, Vitellio, these are not questions a husband puts to his wife.’

  ‘They might be questions that a man puts to a woman he loves.’

  She frowned. ‘We are not children, Vitellio. We have been married for ten years and the reasons for marrying, well, I was then a child and you quite reasonably saw an advantage in taking me as a wife.’

  ‘That is unfair. I was ready to love you, and did.’

  ‘And I loved you, Vitellio, but one grows up and one changes, and as one changes so do one’s feelings.’

  ‘My feelings for you have not changed.’

  ‘You still see the advantage –’

  ‘I did not marry you just for the advantage.’

  ‘Not just, perhaps, but it surely played a role.’

  ‘You were very beautiful . . . you are still beautiful.’

  ‘But not for much longer . . . And when a man, another man, a man who . . .’ Her voice faltered, and then suddenly became indignant rather than rueful. ‘You surely know how feelings change. Weren’t you in love with Letizia di Comastri?’

  ‘I was not in love with her, no. It was . . . she was . . . she, too, was very beautiful and –’

  ‘And she took to you, and who can blame either her or you? Life is short, Vitellio, and God has not called us to the religious life. We are human and weak and surely we must be tolerant of one another’s weaknesses as Jesus was with Mary Magdalene and the adulterous woman?’

  ‘He told her to sin no more.’

  ‘Of course, and when I can muster the strength, I will sin no more; but think what it is like to be a woman, Vitellio, a beautiful woman, who since the age of fourteen has seen the faces of men light up when she enters the room, but knows that soon those looks will be directed elsewhere. She is in her last years in bloom. Soon she will be shrivelled and ignored. And then a man comes along – a man who promises to capture her beauty, to immortalise it – a man who could have his pick of any woman, but desires her –’

  ‘Have I not always desired you?’

  ‘Oh, of course, Vitellio. But you’re my husband, and a husband, night after night, year after year . . .’ Paola, who had been facing away from Scarpia, now turned and looked at him with an expression that was at once sad and mildly mocking. ‘You should not have married a Roman, Vitellio. We are too fickle, too pleasure-loving, too frivolous, too cynical, too insincere. We feel we have God in our pockets – a God who is so all-forgiving that we can surely forgive ourselves.’

  They retired to their rooms. Nunzi reappeared to help her mistress undress; so, too, Scarpia’s valet. When they were once again alone, they remained in their separate bedrooms.

  6

  The Pope’s injunctions to his subjects that the French were to be treated courteously had been accepted by the aristocracy, but had confused the people of the street, who, having been told by their priests that the Jacobins were devils intent on the destruction of the Church, could not understand why the agent of Satan, Joseph Bonaparte, had been received cordially by the Pope at the Quirinale Palace; nor why they must stand by and watch as the city’s finest works of art, of which even those who did not own them were proud, were being loaded onto carts to be taken to Paris. Despite the papal edicts, strutting Frenchmen were threatened and insulted in the street. So, too, the zealous republicans who had come to Rome from other parts of Italy to partake in the glory of overthrowing the Pope.

  On 27 December 1797, there was a large demonstration by these foreign agitators, shouting ‘Long live liberty!’ and ‘Long live the Republic!’ Stones were thrown at the papal troops. A company of dragoons dispersed the crowd, but the republican agitators regrouped on the Pincio. Once again, the dragoons were attacked, this time with knives as well as stones. Two troopers were dragged off their horses and killed. Enraged, their companions drove the crowd back down the Lungara towards the French Embassy, the Palazzo Corsini. There General Duphot came out with drawn sword to defend the republicans. ‘Long live liberty!’ he shouted. ‘Courage! I am your general!’ He advanced on a corporal and four soldiers from the papal army by the Porta Settimanas. The troopers, on the order of their corporal, raised their muskets and fired. Duphot was shot in the head. His body was carried into the Palazzo Corsini, where he was found to be dead.

  In the Quirinale Palace the news was received with dismay: it was the case of Bassville all over again, but far more serious because of the general’s links to the Bonaparte family. Cardinal Doria Pamphili, who had replaced the exhausted Cardinal Zelada as Secretary of State, went at once in person to the Palazzo Corsini to apologise for what had occurred. Joseph Bonaparte was not to be appeased. Whatever his personal feelings might have been at the loss of a friend and future kinsman, Duphot’s death provided the casus belli that the Directory had been demanding for some time. He immediately demanded from Cardinal Doria post horses to enable the French mission to leave the city.

  The cardinal pleaded with him to stay, but the ambassador was inflexible, and the next day left Rome for Paris with his wife, his children and the entire diplomatic staff. Among the party w
as Armand Ringel, who took with him rolled-up canvases of unfinished paintings, including those of the beauties of antiquity, the goddess Venus and the nymph Larunda.

  *

  When the news of Duphot’s death reached Paris, the Directory ordered the commander of the French army in Italy, Napoleon Bonaparte, to march on Rome. Bonaparte delegated the task to his chief adjutant, General Berthier. As the French army advanced down the peninsula, the cardinals urged Pope Pius to flee to Naples. He refused, awaiting his fate with pious resignation: he was ready, if it was the will of God, to die for the Catholic faith.

  Of course, all knew that it was unlikely that even the fanatical enemies of the Catholic religion in the Directory would dare execute a pope; and it was clear that even if such an order should be sent from Paris, no general would want to make the occupation of Rome more difficult by antagonising the population. However, there were lesser figures in the papal government who could be punished for opposing liberty without causing a stir.

  When Scarpia returned home from duty at the Quirinale Palace on 14 February, he found Paola sitting by the fire. He sat down on a chair at a distance from his wife. ‘Cardinal Doria, Duke Braschi and Azara have surrendered the city,’ he said. ‘The French will be here tomorrow.’

  ‘You must leave,’ she said.

  ‘I am not a coward,’ said Scarpia.

  ‘Of course you are not a coward,’ said Paola, ‘but nor are you a Don Quixote. Your name is on a list, and, when the French enter Rome, you will be arrested. You and your man Spoletta.’

  ‘I have committed no crime.’

  Paola laughed – a dry, dead laugh. ‘A crime is in the eyes of the beholder. To them you are an enemy of liberty . . .’

  ‘To them?’

  ‘The French.’

  ‘Have you heard from your lover? Did he tell you about the list?’

  ‘He is no longer my lover and he has returned to Paris.’

  ‘Who, then?’

  ‘Angelotti is with Berthier.’

  ‘And so the warning comes from the marchesa?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Scarpia was silent. Then: ‘I don’t like to run from the field of battle.’

  ‘There is no battle. We have surrendered.’

  Scarpia paused again, then asked: ‘And will you come with me?’

  Paola looked down at her knees. ‘I am not on the list. Nor are the children. My father, Ludovico . . . They are not thought to be enemies of the republicans.’

  ‘And you, of course,’ said Scarpia, ‘are known to have been friendly towards the French.’

  Paola said nothing.

  ‘So I am to lose my wife and children as well as my home?’

  ‘We will join you later.’ She spoke without conviction.

  ‘I am their father,’ said Scarpia.

  ‘Of course. But you will not be much use to them either dead or in a dungeon.’

  *

  Scarpia and Spoletta left Rome that evening by the Appian Gate. The next day, 15 February, the anniversary of the election of Pope Pius VI to the papacy, French troops marched into Rome. General Berthier proceeded to the Capitol, where he proclaimed, in the name of the French Republic, a new political order. After a thousand-year rule, the Pope was deposed. The donation of the Emperor Constantine was abrogated by the will of the people. The tyranny of priests was over. Wreathed with laurel, and standing in front of the statue of Marcus Aurelius festooned with tricolour flags, the French general proclaimed a republic. ‘Descendants of Cato, Brutus and Cicero, accept the homage of free Frenchmen on the Capitol, where you so often defended the rights of the people to celebrate the Roman Republic! These sons of the Gauls, with the olive branch of peace in their hands, will re-erect on this hallowed spot the altars of freedom that were set up of old by the first Brutus. And you, citizens of Rome, who are recovering your lawful rights, remember the blood that flows in your veins! Turn your eyes to the monuments of glory that surround you! Regain your ancient greatness and the virtues of your fathers!’

  Giovanni Braschi, Pope Pius VI, was now a prisoner in the Quirinale Palace. When told that he had been deposed, he simply bowed his head and said that he accepted the inscrutable designs of divine providence. On 17 February, he was ordered to prepare to leave the city. Pius said he wished to die by the tomb of St Peter. ‘You can die anywhere,’ the French officer replied. It was made clear that, if he refused to leave, he would be forcibly expelled. Early in the morning on 20 February 1797, after hearing Mass, the ailing eighty-year-old pontiff climbed into a coach at the Cortile de San Damso with two priests and his doctor, Tassi. It was still dark. Escorted by a small contingent of French soldiers, the coach passed through the streets unnoticed. With no ceremony and no farewells, the supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church left the Eternal City.

  PART THREE

  Eleven

  1

  With the eviction of the Pope and the occupation of Rome by General Berthier’s army, the only principality in Italy that remained free of the French was the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Its king, Ferdinand, was, of all Europe’s enlightened despots, the least enlightened and the most despotic. He was a Bourbon – brother of the King of Spain and cousin of the King of France. His wife, Queen Maria Carolina, was a Habsburg – sister of the Emperor of Austria and Marie Antoinette, the decapitated Queen of France. Ferdinand ruled, in his own view, by divine right – his subjects children who never grew up.

  Ferdinand was coarse, sensual and unaffected. His brother-in-law, the Emperor Francis, described him as ‘ugly, though not absolutely repulsive: his skin is fairly smooth and firm, with a yellowish pallor; he is clean except for his hands; and at least he does not stink’. The Italian historian, Bernadetto Croce, saw him as the prototype of the plebeian nobleman, ‘with plebeian speech, habits and gestures’ – closer to his coachman than his ministers, ‘being a fine driver himself, good-natured with all and beloved as a bon signore for his improvidence, admired for his pomp and luxury, easy to compete with in jokes and jibes’. He ate with his fingers, spoke with a vulgar accent, used crude language and, as a result, was close to the common people. ‘The truth is,’ wrote Goethe, ‘the Neapolitans lead a coarse life, but one that is free.’

  Ferdinand loved hunting and it was rare that he allowed matters of state to interfere with the chase. In the royal palace in Naples there were chickens, pigeons, ducks, geese, partridges, quails, canaries, cats, dogs – and caged rats and mice which Ferdinand would release and hunt over the marble floors of the state apartments. He loathed reading, and while never abdicating his right to rule, left the routine administration of his kingdom to others. His contempt for learning, like his coarse sensuality and vulgar language, enhanced his popularity with the mass of his subjects. They, too, thought reading a waste of time. ‘In Naples,’ wrote the French Abbé Galiani, ‘there are at most only twelve people who can read.’

  Ferdinand’s wife, Queen Maria Carolina, when she had arrived as a young princess from Vienna, had been fond of reading and encouraged it among her entourage. It became smart for young Neapolitans from the aristocracy and bourgeoisie to hold advanced views and meet to discuss them in Masonic lodges. Maria Carolina herself favoured Freemasonry until it became apparent that if one did away with God, or reduced Him to a vague ‘supreme being’ with no particular link to the Catholic Church, then the divine right of kings became problematic – indeed was rejected altogether by just the kind of people the Queen had encouraged to read books.

  Maria Carolina, who from the age of twenty-four had taken it upon herself to fill the vacuum left by her husband’s disinclination to rule, had grown into a formidable woman. Her model was her mother, the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa, and she had inherited her mother’s strong will, considerable intelligence and sense of duty. She was extravagant and lavished gifts on her favourites, both men and women. There were rumours of liaisons with her male favourites, but nothing was ever proved. She had eighteen children of whom nine died in inf
ancy, mostly from smallpox, and one was stillborn.

  The events in Paris in 1789 divided irrevocably the enlightened despots from their enlightened subjects. Ferdinand and Maria Carolina heard with dismay of the humiliations endured by King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette following the fall of the Bastille. All at once advanced views were proscribed. Anyone who talked about liberty, who read foreign newspapers, who wore trousers rather than breeches, who had a moustache, a beard or even sideburns, or eschewed the powdered wig in favour of a Brutus haircut, was considered a Jacobin, plotting the downfall of the king. And such suspicions were not unfounded. A Patriotic Society was formed in Naples by a group of young noblemen and middle-class intellectuals – patriotism being now the preferred term for republicanism since Robespierre had given Jacobinism a bad name. A conspiracy to overthrow the king led by a lawyer named Blasi was uncovered: Blasi was tortured and executed and his co-conspirators sent to the galleys.

  When, in 1793, the news reached Naples that first King Louis of France and then Queen Marie Antoinette had been guillotined by the Jacobins in Paris, the Sicilian monarchs’ political antipathy towards republicans became a visceral and implacable loathing. The spirit of vendetta, common among Calabrians and Sicilians, now entered the blood of their Spanish and Austrian sovereigns. Under a portrait of her sister that Queen Maria Carolina kept in her study was written: Je poursuiverai ma vengeance jusqu’au tombeau. But how was that vengeance to be pursued? The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was large in territory and prosperous in times of peace; but its people, subject for so many centuries to pugnacious invaders – the Normans, the Germans, the French, the Spaniards – had lost any martial spirit themselves. Few engaged in events outside their parish: most lived happily from day to day.

  Soon after the dismissal of the Marchese Tanucci at the instigation of Queen Maria Carolina – a fall that had precipitated the exile of Vitellio Scarpia’s father to his estates in Sicily – the queen had been advised by her brother, the Austrian emperor, that her kingdom, with a short land frontier but long coastline, should concentrate its resources on building a powerful navy. Who could they recruit to undertake such an ambitious programme? A minister, the Prince of Caramanico, recommended an Englishman, John Acton, who had built up the naval forces of Tuscany, and had done well in a recent attack by the Tuscan fleet on Algiers. Queen Maria Carolina’s kinsman, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, agreed to release him, and in 1779 John Acton was appointed Admiral of the Neapolitan Fleet.