Monday, 8 June 2015

Marchesa Maddalena (A Tosca Story)

I based this story on one of my favourite operas, Tosca, taking some ideas from Sardou's play and some liberties with Puccini's libretto, but staying true, I hope, to the opera's spirit.  This story is told from the point of view of the Marchesa Attavanti,  a key figure of both play and opera who never appears on stage.  



For a year or two, it was the craze among all the best people in Rome to be painted by Cavaradossi.  They did not pay merely for stiff portraits, but for pictures of themselves as they dreamed of being: gods or nymphs or heroes of ancient times, in a bright swirl of dance or battle.  Yes, many of these people could be flattered into thinking they were gods.  But it was the painter’s visit, as much as the pictures they were left with, that made them feel favoured beyond the ordinary run of men.  The spice of danger, the teasing charm: having Mario’s intent eyes all to oneself, for as long as the sitting took … it was heady wine.  Who would know that better than I? 

And I never kept any of his sketches.  Perhaps I really thought he was immortal.

I was surprised when he asked me to be his model for a sacred subject.  He did not usually go in for saints and angels.  It turned out that someone had reported him for owning forbidden books, the works of Voltaire, as it happened.  To avoid being thrown out of Rome, he had offered his services to the Cardinal Priest of Sant’Andrea delle Valle, to paint a mural of Mary Magdalene in his church, and the Cardinal, in return, had pulled strings.  When I saw his sketch, I observed that there was no sense in his currying favour by painting a pious picture, if he was going to make it look as unorthodox as that.  He said:

‘Nonsense, Francesca. The kind of people who will be looking at this picture won’t notice.  As long as the Magdalene is on her knees, and her hair and robes are the right colour, no one gives a fig.  If my Magdalene shows the face of an avenging angel, instead of simpering weak-chinned submission, and if her hands are raised to accuse God of his cruelty to humanity, instead of pleading for forgiveness … in fact, if she looks like my wonderful Francesca, instead of Magdalene, what’s that to them?  People like the good Sacristan here are completely blind.’

Between sentences, he was glancing at me, and then putting more strokes on his picture, with his thumb poised to smudge the charcoal.  I kept my smile distant, and merely said, 

‘Perhaps so.  But, you know, you shouldn’t tease the Sacristan.  It’s dangerous.  Don’t go thinking he isn’t important enough to matter.  The spite of a put-upon servant has ruined many a great man and lady before now.’

‘Tease him?  Me?’ protested Mario, all wide-eyed innocence.

‘Yes.  You know what I mean,’ I said severely.  ‘Dallying with your dusky diva under his nose, and that sort of thing.  He’s not that blind.’

Mario’s mistress was a bone of contention between us.  The celebrated singer Floria Tosca … I admit I was not always kind about her.  The dusky diva, the godly goat-girl, the brainless brunette.  I couldn’t understand what he saw in her, and feared she would do him no good.  Even then, he was having to lie to her about painting me, because the mere thought of another woman posing for him would send her into fits of fury.  My modelling sessions were carefully timed during her opera rehearsals.

‘This senseless jealousy of hers must be exhausting for you,’ I would say.  ‘How on earth do you put up with it?’

‘First of all,’ he answered, sketching away as always, ‘you must realise that there is nothing senseless about her jealousy.  Marchesa, you were born and bred in the purple.  You always know what to say and what to do in refined company, without a moment’s thought.  Floria grew up herding goats, as you point out.  She knows how to behave like a lady now, because she has worked at it, and is not, as you imply, stupid, but a very quick learner.  But she knows her position is not secure.  She knows that, at her very next performance, if she disappoints her audience, their adoration will turn to hissing, her contract will not be renewed, and back she will go to the goats.  I mean to stay with Floria, but how can she know that?  All her friends at the stage door will be telling her that she had better line up another rich lover or two, because it can only be a matter of time before the Cavaliere tires of her, and of course he will be looking for a bride, a well-bred girl of his own rank in life … it would be astonishing if she were not jealous.’

I had nothing to say to that.  I only thought: yes, she has every reason to be jealous, except one.  He is staying in Rome, in danger, just to be with her.  He is spending the night with her, every night that they can.  And all I ever had were a few gallant kisses.  So do I have no reason to be jealous?

I did not show any of this.  Like every celebrated beauty, I had practised from an early age making my face a mask, and now it was second nature.  Being a beauty is an exacting task for a woman.  Mario, now … when you looked at him you did not see his face, but his laughter, his quicksilver mind, his headlong enthusiasm for his work, for good company, for everything.  He never gave his looks a thought.  Whereas I – I could rarely afford to forget mine.

I am the Marchesa Attavanti.  My husband, the stiff-backed old Marquis Ottavio, is as it were the yardstick and the guarantor of the Roman nobility, and I am the ornament of his house, the tireless arbiter of taste, oiler of wheels, stifler of discord and distributor of favours among the people who matter.  Invitations to my balls and levées are the sign that one has arrived at the pinnacle of society.  The Queen is my personal friend, and I know exactly how to approach the upper clergy, demurely in black, with meek ring-kissing and precisely judged almsgiving.  Even the Pope himself unbent a little in audience with me.  But of course a great beauty also has to know how to practise galanteria: especially the young wife of an elderly husband.  People would be disappointed if there were no exercise for wagging tongues: with whom did the Marchesa dance last night, on whom did she smile, who kissed her hand with particular fervour?  The popular notion is that the Marchesa takes her pleasures freely though discreetly, and that the dear old Marquis is an acquiescent cuckold – perhaps even a pander, who furthers his own influence through his wife’s satisfied lovers.  And this reputation was no hindrance at all to the life I really wished to lead.

For it allowed people to forget that my own family, the Angelotti, were “tainted with treachery”.  That my brother, Cesare, had been a consul in the Roman Republic, and then had become a fugitive, never heard from again, after the King of Naples invaded.  Faced with my beautiful blank mask, no one would be so indiscreet as to accuse me of republican sympathies.  How could politics ever enter so utterly feminine a mind?  How could such a mercenary goddess even remember that she had a brother? 

And so I went everywhere, and spoke to everyone.  I knew exactly the place to stand in the white-gilt salon, so that the trusty servant, behind the panelling designed to hide his plebeian presence from the company, would hear every word and go unnoticed on his errand.  I had a splendid ally in Mario, the society painter, the fascinating half-French chevalier. He, as a foreigner, was licensed to talk mild heresy with a jesting air, often bringing hidden dangers into the open.  I was the severe sphinx before whom anything could be said.  What I really thought was such a mystery, Mario used to nickname me Beltade Ignota – the unknown beauty.  Together, we warned quite a few people, hid them and helped them to flee the city before they could be arrested.  We sheltered the secret groups who met to read forbidden books and plan the return of a rational secular state. 

We were allies, we were friends, we flirted, but we were never lovers.  Tosca got there before me, and I was not quite unscrupulous enough to do my utmost to cut her out.  Perhaps I could not have done, even if I had tried.  If it was hard for Mario to resist the temptation, he never showed it.  It was quite difficult for me.  But the dissembling, the play-acting, that was easy.  Until the person to be hidden mattered too much: until it was my brother.

Things were worse than ever in Rome.  Napoleon, the embodiment of revolution, was threatening Italy and everyone believed our defeated republicans would stage a revolt in his support.  To repress it, the city governor brought in a new chief of police, a Sicilian: Baron Vitellio Scarpia.  He came with a ready-made entourage of cut-throats, and soon added to them from the scum of the city.  Spies were everywhere.  Gossip had it that Scarpia even controlled a network of priests who disregarded the seal of the confessional and told him people’s secrets – especially women’s.  The gossip went further: if Scarpia heard of a lady’s peccadillo, he would ‘invite’ her to his office and suggest that, in return for his silence, she should give him, too, a share in her favours.  He was bored with prostitutes and courtesans, and found this a more invigorating way of gratifying his appetites.  I dismissed the talk at the time.  But what was certain and worse, people were seized and imprisoned secretly, and, in the Palazzo Farnese itself, the very heart of Roman civility and grace, Scarpia’s men used the extortion methods of Sicilian bandits.  I met him once or twice.  I found his religious observance punctilious, his manners impeccable.  He made me shudder.  Two of his lieutenants were always with him, and I saw their dead eyes assessing me, passing on and taking the reckoning of everyone in the company.  To them, cruelty was what card-playing is to a hardened gambler.  He hardly cares for it any more, but he cares for nothing else.  Breaking men, destroying human souls, was their one, trivial pastime and they could never stop thinking about it.  But Scarpia could sip it like wine, enjoy it like a connoisseur, and discourse civilly while he planned his next trap: which made him even more terrifying.

And I got the message, by roundabout ways, that Cesare had fallen into his hands.  Trying to return secretly to Rome, he had been betrayed and was a prisoner in the Castel Sant’Angelo.  At once I determined that I would never rest until I had saved him.  It was of no use to plead for his release, even to the royal couple themselves.  To pardon Cesare would be to strike at the heart of everything they stood for.  But to free him by stealth would be a difficult and deadly game.  Cesare was almost the biggest prey that Scarpia had ever hunted: to lose him would be more than his own life was worth, although he perhaps dared not execute him openly.  I trusted, nevertheless, that I, the Marchesa Attavanti, was too high for even Scarpia to touch.  If I were caught helping my brother, I might be banished or locked in ‘protective custody’ in a convent, but I would survive, and nothing would happen to the Marquis.  He was indispensable.  Not that he ever did anything: his simple existence was a corner-stone of the Roman state.  For Mario, though, a few places further down the ladder, it would have been much too dangerous.  So I determined I would not tell him.  That was my great mistake.  If only I had confided in him, and if he in turn hadn’t lied to Tosca... We were afraid.  Fear destroys the best-laid plans, more than anything else.

I put out feelers, and proferred money, and a wonderful rogue of a tavern-keeper, whom my coachman knew, found a weak point among the jailers.  I was able to send Cesare food and clothing, and at last risked a message, a slip of paper inside a loaf of bread.  I got word back, too: when my packages first reached him, Cesare was more dead than alive, too weak even to attempt to escape, but after a month or two, with a better cell and better food, he gained a little strength.  The jailer, already prospering thanks to my bribes, was promised enough to leave Rome as a rich man, if he happened to forget to lock the door one evening, and arranged for the guards to stay out of a particular passage. 

The Attavanti have a private chapel in Sant’Andrea della Valle, although we do not use it much.  It worked well that I was posing for Mario’s painting.  As I knelt in prayer, being Mary Magdalene, it was easy to slip a key to the chapel under an altar cloth without even Mario being aware of it.  And my maid and I had sorted out a basket of women’s clothes, which I brought to the church, ‘to give to charity’.  They were spirited into the Attavanti chapel and hidden behind a family tomb.  Cesare was to escape from the castle at dusk, make for the church, let himself into the walled, railed chapel, disguise himself, and hide there until one of our brotherhood met him and helped him out of the city.  There should have been several hours of darkness to make use of (and in Rome, the night is dark).  He did not know the whole plan: I was only able to send him a very short message, naming the day and telling him where the key was hidden.

And it all went wrong.  For some reason he escaped at midday, instead of at nightfall, and I did not find out.  Perhaps the message was unclear.  Perhaps an unexpected chance presented itself and he thought it better to take it than to wait.  Perhaps the jailer knew that he was suspected, and insisted on haste: in any case, he collected his money and was gone.  And was too obvious about it, so that Cesare’s flight was discovered almost at once.  When Cesare staggered into the church, I should think he had already been seen in the street, by one of Scarpia’s spies who loitered at corners, even in the noonday heat, when almost no one was about.  Certainly none of my people were there: only Mario, taking advantage of the afternoon quiet to paint in peace.

Mario should have gone home for the night, and never have known.  But even if I had foreseen this accident, I did not realise that Mario would actually risk his life for my brother.  He knew Cesare, respected him for what he had done, and knew perfectly well what was at stake if he helped him.  I treasured Mario so much.  I thought that he would value himself, see that his life was more important than other men’s, a thing of beauty.  He was an artist.  How I underestimated him.

Mario didn’t hesitate.  He realised that they couldn’t afford to wait in the church.  Knowing of no other plan, he took Cesare to his villa.  This wasn’t his family property, it was a little place just inside the city walls that he rented under an assumed name, for political purposes … and lately, it turned out, for amorous purposes as well: he had got into the habit of meeting Tosca there.  Otherwise it might have been safe enough: it could have taken Scarpia a long time to find out where it was, even though suspicion fell on Mario.  But with Tosca on the scent …

I did not know any of this until much later.  I had a full day of engagements.  In the early morning, though, I had slipped into the church to make sure that everything was still in place.  Mario was not at work yet, but he had finished roughing out his picture after I left the previous day.  I was struck by astonishment, seeing the composition complete for the first time. 

Mario used to say, ruefully, that he would be a better painter if he were not a gentleman of leisure but had to earn his bread by it: he would have less time for finicking.  I always thought he underrated himself.  He had learned from David, but David’s pictures, however brilliantly composed, always strike me as marmoreal, cold.  In Mario’s pictures everything seemed to be breathing, about to take wing.  His Magdalene, larger than life, filled the space between two pillars with the balance of a piece of expert calligraphy.  She was kneeling on one knee as if she had just flung herself down, or was about to leap up: she knelt as much like Diana as Magdalene.  Her hands, stretched towards heaven, might have been holding a bow.  The hair was my fair hair, in disorder, flowing in waves.  The face was my face, but not my beautiful calm mask.  It was unguarded, full of a wild, proud sorrow.  I looked long at the picture, deeply moved and disturbed.

Mario had painted me as much more beautiful than I saw myself as being, and it was because he had painted me as if I were free.

I pretended to say a decade of the Rosary, still looking covertly at the picture, and then I stood up to leave.  My maid, waiting behind, made some un-called-for joke about the Cavaliere and his paintbrush.  She was an impudent wench whom I had had to correct several times already.   I stared at her coldly.

‘If I have to tell you to watch your tongue so much as once more, Lucia, I shall send you packing without a character,’ I said. 

‘Your pardon, signora,’ she said sulkily.

We went home, and I dealt with some charity work and met several distinguished guests.  In the middle of the day, news came by courier.  The Austrians had defeated Napoleon in Piedmont: it looked as if Rome was safe from the French.  At once my time was further taken up with a grand celebration in the Palazzo Farnese, where the Queen would be present, and Floria Tosca would sing a new cantata in praise of victory and peace.  I went to my rooms to put on evening dress.  My coiffeuse was waiting to thread pearls in my hair, while I collected together my scent-bottle, reticule and fan with Lucia’s help. 

‘Where is my fan?’ I asked her.  ‘The black one with the family crest on it.  I thought I had it yesterday.’

‘That fan, signora?’ she asked, with surprise that seemed feigned.

‘Yes, that one.  Why do you ask?’

‘I left it in the church this morning,’ she said deliberately.  ‘It’s an old one.  I thought you wanted it to go with the other things we left for charity.’

I felt a deep stab of fear go through me.  There was nothing else in the basket that could be proved to come from the Attavanti, but if the fan was found, it would give me away instantly.  This girl had betrayed me, and she did not care if I knew it. 

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said indifferently.  ‘Just find me the one with the feathers: that will go with my gown well enough.’

As we drove to the Farnese, I was in a ferment of worry and indecision.  As far as I knew, Cesare’s escape would take place that evening.  The key and the clothes would only have to lie unseen for a few more hours, at most, I told myself.  The fan added very little to what was already a high risk, and I had been taking it quietly up to then … but this trivial mishap awoke me to all that could go wrong with the plan.  Perhaps, somehow, I knew that it already had. 

The Diva was late.  We had to listen to an endless speech from the Governor’s deputy, and then converse politely while the orchestra played gavottes.  My face ached from smiling.  I was relieved when at last the audience took their seats and Paisiello tapped his baton to begin.  Tosca looked beautiful, I had to admit, with a dignity well suited to a state occasion.  The Cantata might be an undistinguished piece that the maestro had pulled out of a drawer and dusted off to look new, but I had never heard Tosca sing better.  I preferred this sacred music to the histrionics of her stage roles.  The calm discipline with which her voice rode the trills and runs, soaring evenly to a high C, took my mind from my fears and set it on other thoughts.

‘She is not stupid,’ Mario had said.  Evidently not.  She had mastered her craft and, working within its rules, she had complete freedom.  Just as Mario had.  No wonder they understood one another.  But also, she was vivid, passionate, and did not dissemble.

He loved her best, and for good reasons.  I would simply have to accept it.  But he did love me too.  I hugged the thought of his Magdalene to myself.  For him to see and paint that grief that I could not allow myself to show, that depth of feeling that I could not see in myself … it was an act of more than ordinary love.  And yet … I was suddenly struck by doubt.  I remembered some artistic conversation I had not properly understood at the time, when Mario had been babbling (it had seemed to me) about harmonious contrasts, and the possibility of blending the features of different people in the same portrait.  What if the face and figure were mine, but the soul was Tosca’s?   What if he had used her stage grief, that she could pour out so freely when she was Dido or Cassandra, to give life to his Magdalene, and my part in her was no more than that of a frigid mannequin?

And I, shallow egoist that I was, was worrying about this, when already … well, you shall hear.  I will say for myself that I had decided to speak to Tosca at the end of the performance, to assure her of my friendship, and perhaps to let her know, somehow, that I was not her rival, that it was only politics that involved me with her lover.  But as the audience gathered round to congratulate her, a lackey handed her a small piece of paper, and she looked at it and her olive skin became ashen.  She turned on her heel without a word and left the room.  The maestro had to cover for her.  ‘A thousand apologies, signori, signore … the artistic temperament … the nerves sometimes overwhelm her when the performance is over …’

Now I was really afraid.  Something had happened: what was it?  I dared not ask anybody.  I went outside without waiting for the Marquis or my maid, and walked to our carriage where the coachman and horses had been waiting throughout the reception.  This man was my unfailing contact with the world of the streets.  Without turning his head he said as I came up: ‘It’s bad news, signora.  We think that Signor Cesare is out.  He was in the church, but he’s vanished … he’s not taken yet.  But the Cavalier Cavaradossi has been arrested: Giuseppe saw them take him into the palace.’

Oh God.  So that was what Tosca knew.  I feared the worst at once.

‘Please tell the Marquis,’ I said, ‘that the Queen has asked me to stay behind to speak to her.  He should go home without me.  I am going back into the palace.’

‘God be with you, signora,’ he said.  He understood well enough.

I was indeed going to speak to the Queen.  Before she left, I was going to ask her for a private audience, and beg her to intervene to secure Mario’s release.  Maria Carolina was a capricious woman, and not over-bright, but she had her kindly side.  I was already composing my speech in my mind … how to pull at her heartstrings, without sounding in the least like a supporter of revolution.  

As I entered the salon, my eyes went straight to her seat of honour.  For a moment I could not see her for the crowd.  The room looked like a kicked anthill.  The Queen was sprawled backwards with her arms dangling towards the floor, apparently in a faint.  Her ladies were chafing her hands and holding salts under her nose.  An equerry stood by with a piece of paper in his hand, and nobles, beribboned officers, plum-coloured monsignors, were milling around him, shouting: ‘Let us hear it!’ ‘Silence!’ ‘Treason!’ ‘Read it again!’ ‘No, it’s a lie!’  The equerry cleared his throat and there was dead silence.

‘Fifteenth June … Your Royal Highness … At the close of day the enemy was reinforced by a fresh army and after fighting on the plain of Marengo for the greater part of the night, our forces were beaten.  At the present moment, encamped with the remains of our army, we are seeking terms with …’
Cries of ‘No!’  ‘Shame!’  ‘Villainy!’ drowned the rest of the dispatch.  I stood rooted to the spot.  So Bonaparte had won, after all.  The French, not the Austrians or the crown of Naples, would decide what happened in Italy.  Perhaps they would get as far as Rome and set up a second Republic.  If the Pope returned at all, it would be on their terms.  The Jacobins might revolt in anticipation … oh, dear God.  What a night to be asking the Queen to pull strings for a half-French Jacobin!

Her ladies had raised her to her feet and, in a brightly coloured clump, fussing and shuffling, began to help her out of the room.  I pushed shamelessly in among them.  ‘Your Royal Highness,’ I said urgently. ‘Signora …’

She opened her eyes and looked at me.  ‘You,’ she said theatrically.  (She could have given even Tosca a few lessons.) ‘Francesca Angelotti.  You and your brother should be happy now.  Power to traitors and infidels!  Leave my sight.’

She soon left mine; I stayed standing there. 

The crowd of courtiers surged this way and that, broke up, reformed in random circles.  For the next hour, I went from pillar to post through the palace.  Would Governor Naselli honour the Marchesa Attavanti with an audience?  No, he was with the Neapolitan captains, deciding what terms to offer to Bonaparte.  Perhaps: he would be briefing members of the court in an hour.  No, he was taking measures to place extra soldiers on the street.  Would the Queen perhaps change her mind and see an old friend?  Yes, perhaps … and I got some way towards her apartments, only to have my way blocked by guards.  No, the Queen was still indisposed.  By this time I would have resembled Mario’s Magdalene, though less beautiful, if I could have found anyone to fall on my knees in front of.  At last, frantic, I decided there was nothing for it but to brave Baron Scarpia himself.  He would have to answer to me.  I walked round to the opposite side of the quadrangle, to the foot of the staircase that led to his suite of rooms, lit by a dully burning oil lamp mounted on the wall.  There were soldiers with fixed bayonets standing on either side.  They saluted, but moved to stand in my way.

‘May I pass?’ I said, loudly, but my voice quivered.  ‘I am the Marchesa Attavanti.’

‘Here she is!’ shouted one of the soldiers. 

A squad of eight, in uniform with cockades, jogged up from the other side of the courtyard.  I made as if to push past the ones on the stairs, but they easily barred my way and the others surrounded me.

‘Come with us, signora,’said their corporal, shamefacedly but doggedly.

‘By whose orders?’ I demanded.

‘Baron Scarpia’s,’ he replied.

So I was to meet Scarpia by his own choice.  My heart beat even faster.  I knew what I would say to him … I would see if he dared molest the Marchesa Attavanti … But instead of going up the stairs, we moved in a hollow square across the courtyard and out under the high archway, to where a carriage awaited … my carriage.

My husband the Marquis got down and extended his hand to me.

‘Please enter, Francesca.  We are going home.’

I stared at him, between the heads of the soldiers.  ‘But Baron Scarpia wants to see me.’

‘No.  The Baron has been kind enough to communicate with me … he simply wishes you to go home.  Come, Francesca.’

I felt as if I had been a child playing alone in a dimly lit room, convincing himself that he is fighting monsters and pursued by spectres, while all the time his parents have been looking on indulgently, and at last come in with a light and tell him it is time for bed.  I no longer knew what was real.  I was utterly at a loss.

My husband took my hand; I pulled back.  It was time to scream, shout, fight, refuse to leave this place until I was assured of some safety for the men I loved … I actually drew in my breath to cry out.  Yet it seemed false, dingy, theatrical.  The sort of thing Tosca would do.  I was supposed to have dignity: I was a Marchesa.

Like an obedient child, I climbed into the carriage and sat back in the cushions beside my husband.  The soldiers made way for me, and saluted as the carriage moved off.

We did not speak a word on the way home; perhaps Ottavio knew that he could not trust the coachman.  I sat there trembling.  Once we were home, he suavely sent the servants this way and that and then ushered me into his study.

‘Francesca,’ he said as he closed the door, ‘it is time to be frank.  I do not mind your amours and vagaries, but you must stay out of politics from now on.  It is much too dangerous.’

‘But Cesare is my brother!’ I cried.

‘Yes,’ he said heavily.  ‘But Cesare has made one false move too many.  He did not have to return to Rome – unless he wanted to cause further trouble, in the pay of a foreign power.  On his own head be it.  I hear he has escaped.  I do not know what you may have had to do with that and I do not ask.  But it has to stop here.  It was as much as I could do, this afternoon, to persuade Scarpia not to arrest you.  I cannot save your brother from being hanged, if he is caught.  But I can save you, and by Heaven I will, whether you like it or not.’

‘He is not caught?’

‘Not as far as I know, not yet.  But he must fend for himself.’

I couldn’t hold back the words.  ‘But the Cavalier Cavaradossi!  Scarpia has him …’

The Marquis’s lips tightened.  ‘I don’t really want to hear about your hot-headed young cavalier.  But I advise you to put your mind at rest.  He has been arrested … so are many people, when there is a threat to the State.  Scarpia probably wants to remove as many crazy Jacobins as he can from the streets until their enthusiasm for Napoleon’s victory has cooled.  I don’t suppose any harm will come to your Mario: he will simply be interviewed and released.  As long as he is not mixed up in anything seriously treasonable.’

I felt the flood of relief I wanted to feel.  Ottavio’s words sounded so wise.  I had sprung to the conclusion that Mario had been caught helping Cesare: but how did I know that?  After all, Cesare was still free … and surely, surely, Mario would not have taken such a risk, he would have known how to extricate himself at the right moment, if only for Tosca’s sake …

‘Tosca has something to do with it as well,’ I muttered.  ‘She had a message after the concert and ran away in a panic …’

‘As to that,’ said Ottavio wryly, ‘who knows the ways of actresses?  They are not really a fit topic for marital conversation …good night, my dear … do stay in your room, by the way.  I shall take precautions but I had rather there was no need of them.’

I was speechless.  He bowed me out, and mechanically I followed a footman who was waiting to carry a candlestick ahead of me, up the stairs. 

Actresses … how extraordinary was the aristocratic mindset.  If the Marquis was barely concerned about Mario, he cared less than nothing for Tosca, for all her artistry and stately dignity.  I resented that, yet I remembered when I had used exactly the same word about her to Mario’s face.  Usually, I kept my tone very light when discussing Tosca with him, but this time we had got into deeper water … too deep.  I had been indignant at some jealous tantrum of hers. 

‘Who does she think she is?’ I had demanded.  ‘If she had her way you would cut yourself off from all civility, be some kind of brute who only meets women in the bedroom … it’s not only coarse and ill-bred, it’s utterly presumptuous the way she tries to control you.  And you let her … she makes you look like a besotted henpecked fool, if you want my opinion.’

‘What the devil do you know about it, Marchesa?’ he replied furiously.  ‘Do you realise that in all her life no one, no one has ever kept faith with Floria?  Her family sold her to the nuns, the nuns sold her to the maestro … money for a lovely voice … no one cared for her.   Of course she snatches at love as a starving child snatches bread!  She needs loyalty, she needs care, she needs to be told that she is loved twenty times a day, and then she will grow into the great and happy woman she truly is …’

‘And this will take how long?’ I demanded.  ‘How much of your life are you going to devote to this actress? A year?  Five years?  A lifetime?  Mario, you are …’

‘A lifetime.  Yes, if she wants it,’ he interrupted in a choked voice, as if daring me to laugh.

I nearly did laugh.  A cool, musical, sympathetic laugh was welling up in my throat, together with the words, ‘Oh, Mario.  You are such a sweet, romantic boy …’

But I bit them back.  He did not just then look either sweet or romantic, and certainly not like a boy.  It was probably as well that I said nothing.  That was the nearest Tosca ever came to causing a complete breach between us.  It passed over, but it seemed that it was only now that I really understood what he had said.

I went to my room, made ready for bed and sent away the maids, but I did not get under the sheets.  I sat and shivered in a kind of stupor.  It was a sultry midsummer night, with no moon, and there were no lights in the streets.  As the night wore on I heard drunken singing, bellowing and the occasional rifle shot from the direction of the Castel Sant’ Angelo.  The Jacobins were indeed celebrating, as Ottavio had said, but it was a dismal sound.

In the small hours I got up and quietly opened the bedroom door and peered out.  At the end of the passage stood a footman, leaning against the wall and yawning.  He saw me, hurriedly straightened himself and bowed.  I went back in, closing the door, and looked out of the window instead.   It was two storeys up.  I could not see anyone, but I heard a throat-clearing and the sound of someone shifting from foot to foot in the space I could not see directly below the window.  Ottavio had put a close watch on me, all right.

No one had ever kept faith with Tosca, Mario had said. 

Keep faith … it was not a phrase much used in the world of galanteria.  I realised at last what he must have meant by it.  What mattered most was not whether he found Tosca or me more charming, or which of us he might be happiest with: it was that Tosca needed him, and he was going to stay with her if it killed him … but that was the very reason why he would have risked helping Cesare.  I felt certain of it.  When he saw someone who would be lost and undone without him, my exquisite Mario would keep faith even though it was insane: something that I would not do, and had not done.  And now it might anyhow be too late.

Dawn began to break, but before the sun rose, I fell into sleep without being aware of it.  I did not wake until the sun was high and my room bright.  A maid was tapping on the door and saying urgently, ‘Signora … signora …’

I got up.  The Marquis wished to speak with me, she said.  I threw on a peignoir and let him into my dressing-room.  I will give him credit: he showed warmth and sympathy.  Taking my two hands, he said, ‘I am sorry, Francesca … Cesare is dead.’

I slumped into a chair.  I felt no surprise: if anything, a kind of dull relief.  He would not know how I had betrayed him.

‘He was found in hiding and when they tried to arrest him, he swallowed poison.’

Yes, I knew that.  I myself had put the vial of poison in the basket of clothes we left in the church.  I knew that Cesare had had enough; that he would rather die than be taken prisoner again.  At least I had been able to do that much for my brother.  His troubles were over.

Ottavio saw that I was weeping quietly.  He touched my shoulder.  ‘The police will release his body to us, Francesca,’ he said.  ‘We can pay our last respects to him.  Baron Scarpia, I think, had … other plans, but … that is the other news.  Baron Scarpia has been murdered, stabbed.  No one knows by whom.’

He saw my expression.  ‘No, I cannot pretend to any great grief either.  But it does make things difficult.  The French on their way, the Jacobins rioting, no chief of police and the agents all much too busy covering their traces and knifing each other to keep order in the city … I have had a time of it already this morning while you have been sleeping, believe me, Francesca.’

I still said nothing, only managed to bend my head towards him by way of thanks.

He moved towards the door and then said, ‘You needn’t despair of your Cavalier Cavaradossi.  With Baron Scarpia gone, there won’t be any executions … he can sit safely in jail, if the Jacobins haven’t let him out already.  He will probably turn up in a day or two as good as new.’ 

‘Where did they find Cesare?’ I managed to ask.

‘In the grounds of a villa just inside the city walls.  Hiding in a well, apparently.’ He sighed.  ‘I am sorry, my dear.’

As I still didn’t reply, he left the room, merely saying, ‘I will tell everyone you are indisposed.  The maid will bring you something warm to drink.  Try not to grieve too much.’

And that was all I knew for the next two days: I was guarded in the house and rumours were kept from me.  While riots swept the streets and the leaderless troops tried weakly to keep order, I swung between wild hope and despair.  Cesare had been found in Mario’s garden.  Surely that meant Mario was implicated.  Was he not in mortal danger even though Scarpia was dead?  Or had he fled or been spirited out of the city?  And who had killed Scarpia?  My mind ground round this useless circle day and night. 

At last things began to settle.  The Jacobins realised that despite Napoleon’s victory, there was no prospect of the French seizing Rome; the crown of Naples would relinquish control, but only to let the Pope return.  Their ardour cooled accordingly, and the authorities, chastened and uncertain, refrained from reprisals.  On the third day the streets were thought safe enough for noble ladies to venture out, properly escorted: and so I decided to go to church, to Sant’Andrea della Valle, dressed in deep black, to pray for my brother’s soul and seek comfort in the Mass.  And also to see Mario’s picture again, and hope that if it survived, so might he.  It might never be finished now, I supposed, but at least I might hire a copyist to take a likeness of it …

But as we entered, several minutes before the service began, I saw nothing in that space between the pillars but fresh, gleaming whitewash.  The old sacristan was walking down the aisle towards the vestry with a paint pot and a broad brush in his hand, and my memory has it that he was whistling, although he cannot have been, in church.  I swept towards him.

‘What have you done,’ I demanded, ‘with the painting of the Magdalene?’

‘What do you ask, my lady?’ he cackled.  ‘What?  About that blasphemous picture?’ (Or it might have been “blasphemer’s picture”.)  ‘Oh, the Cardinal said we must cover it over.  It would be quite unfitting to be showing a picture by a criminal who has just been executed.’

He looked me in the eye, triumphantly.  He knew.  It was clear that he knew.  So that was that.

The church went dark around me.  I sat on a bench between my servants, and heard the whole Mass sitting down.  I neither stood nor knelt.  The girls did their best to draw attention away from me.  The words flapped and echoed meaninglessly in my ears.  I stared at things for minutes on end and could not have said what I was looking at.

Mario was dead, and I had nothing to remember him by.

********

After some time, I found out what had happened, from the new Chief of Police, a reasonable man … I will not say he was not corrupt, all police officers are, but he was corrupt to the extent of sometimes allowing himself to be bribed to do things that one proposed to him, rather than only to refrain from abusing his powers.  And he in turn was able to put pressure on Baron Scarpia’s chief jackal, one Enrico Spoletta, to give a full account of his master’s doings in return for immunity for himself, for all kinds of scandal was coming out about Scarpia’s time in command now that he was safely dead.  I sold a pearl necklace to have an especially detailed interview on the Angelotti case recorded by a clerk, and to be allowed to read it in the police chief’s office, although not to copy it or take it away.  Yet when it was ready, I delayed going to read it.  And when it was open in front of me, my glance would not stay on the words, but rebounded everywhere like drops of water on hot metal.  My heart pounded and my hands were cold.  What was I so afraid of? I asked myself.  They were dead.  It was all over.  I at least was safe.  But as I forced myself to read, I realised I was right to be afraid.

I begin at noon on the day of the failed escape.  From what Spoletta said, he and Scarpia must have arrived in the church only a few minutes after Mario and Cesare had fled from it.  But the trail would have been cold, except that the sacristan, curse him, was eager to imply that the infidel painter must have had something to do with the escape of the republican traitor.  And then there was the fan.  Lucia couldn’t even have put it in the basket.  It was lying on the floor in the chapel, where Scarpia found it.  Scarpia suspected me in any case, but he was able to use the fan as bait for Tosca.

Tosca came in just then, to tell Mario that she would have to sing at the reception that evening, instead of meeting him as they had planned.  She found him gone, and she would have been suspicious at once.  Scarpia knew all about the painter Cavaradossi’s jealous mistress.  It was not just the professional knowledge of a good chief of police, nor yet of a connoisseur of opera: his interest was much more pressing.  But of course he did not reveal it then.  He practised his oily graces on her.  He pretended that he had seen Mario leave with me – Marchesa Attavanti – and showed her the dropped fan by way of proof, in case the painting wasn’t enough.  The stupid bitch fell right into the trap.  Instead of asking herself why the Chief of Police should be so interested in Mario and me, she believed him and stormed off.  Straight to the villa, about which Scarpia would otherwise have known nothing – and he had Spoletta follow her.

Now, Mario and Tosca had each treated the other badly, but no worse than other foolish young lovers do every day.  In any wholesome city in the world, one without Scarpia in it, you can imagine what would have happened when she arrived at the villa.  There would have been a fierce quarrel.  The words ‘selfish liar’ and ‘jealous fool’ would have filled the air.  And then they could have made love all night and been happy again.  For their misjudgments to be the death of them … for that, it took Scarpia.  And me.

When she got there, God only knows what she thought, to see a ragged desperate fugitive instead of the demon Marchesa.  Mario must have known at once that they were in imminent danger.  As far as he knew, there was not a moment to waste – the police might be right on her heels.  I suppose that was how she came to see where he hid Cesare.  Or perhaps she had heard him talk of the well in the past.  It was a terrible mistake, either way.  In point of fact, Spoletta hung back and let Tosca leave the villa and set off back to the city before he sprang his trap.  He kept watch but stayed hidden: he was waiting for reinforcements, and he wanted her to think it was a false alarm.  Mario, for his part, must have wanted Tosca gone for her own safety, and once she was convinced that the Marchesa wasn’t there she would have been quite ready to go.  She didn’t understand politics: perhaps, even then, she didn’t grasp how serious the business was.  She left unmolested.  But she was late for the reception.

And when she had gone, then came the raid, the search: Spoletta and his rabble found no sign of Cesare, but laid hands on Mario, who was being ‘insolent and obstructive’.  (I went there afterwards.  All his painting gear had been thrown on the ground, the unfinished canvases slashed, the sketchbooks torn and scattered.  No wonder he was insolent, but if they thought he would give up a man’s life to save his work, they were mistaken.  He could have given them a hint so easily.  Oh Mario.)  They brought him to Scarpia at the Palazzo Farnese and, while I admired Tosca’s singing in the cantata, they questioned him.  He told them nothing.  But Scarpia had the answer: he sent for Tosca.  He mentioned Mario’s name and instead of flying for her life, the poor silly baggage walked straight into his lair. She might have gone free: there was no reason to arrest her.  Probably she imagined she might smooth things over by paying some routine bribe or calling on one of her noble patrons: she might make amends for her blunder about the fan.  It was all for the love of her Mario.  And Spoletta explained exactly how Scarpia made use of it.

‘That was why the Baron was a good man to work for,’ he said.  ‘He used his head. Having the woman there made it much easier.  All we had to do was set to work on her fine gentleman where she could hear us.  She wasn’t anywhere near as pig-headed.  A few good screams from him and she snapped like a string of beads, couldn’t spill fast enough.’  This was what I had abandoned Mario to: and Tosca.  And had I not known it from the first?  Everyone knew what went on behind barred doors in the palace, and everyone turned a blind eye, as long as the city was safe.  I read, sick and shaking, sitting in my fine lady’s veil and gloves, the hired ruffians staying respectfully clear of me, in the very room where it had happened … How could I bear to live with myself?  Yet I live on, regardless.  I am not as honourable as Tosca.

Could I blame her for betraying Mario and my brother?  Did she ask to be entangled in my schemes?  I would have done the same in her place, however much better I understood things.  But she was the one who was there, with Mario.  I will wager she screamed, cursed and fought.  She did not get as far as the door, only to turn back meekly because she was told to.  If she gave way, it was only because they were too many for her.

But that was not all.  When that part was over, when Scarpia had sent his hounds to find Cesare, and had Mario dragged away to wait for the hangman, his game with Tosca was just beginning.  It turned out that he had had his eyes on the Diva for a long time, and to see her spit hatred at him, in agony for her lover, had only whetted his appetite.  He offered to spare Mario’s life if she would give him her body.  I am not making this up: Spoletta was perfectly frank about it.  Women were one of the perquisites of his master’s job, and after all, who cares if an actress is raped?  Scarpia himself, I am sure, saw things on a higher plane.  It might be a new sensation even for him, to possess a woman who loathed him with every fibre of her being, while her very love for another would force her to comply with any demand he cared to make.  I believe that love was altogether an intense irritant to Scarpia.  He thought that if he flung enough filth at it he could assure himself that it did not exist: the finer and truer the love, the greater the urgency to do so.

And of course – again – Tosca at last agreed.  And again, what else could she do?  She gave in, in return for a promise that Mario would not be hanged, but would be ‘shot’, for appearance’s sake, in a sham execution, after which the two of them would be allowed to escape.  Evidently Scarpia was playing with her.  It defies belief that she trusted in such a fanciful lie, but it was his only offer.  After she left Scarpia she was allowed into the Castel Sant’Angelo, where they had taken Mario, to tell it to him, an hour before dawn.  I do not suppose he believed it for one moment, but perhaps he let her think he did.  I hope at least they were able to forget everything for an instant, for one last embrace.  The Jacobins’ bonfires were burning just below the castle walls; another few hours and the garrison would have lost its nerve, and no one would have been executed, and Mario would have been safe … As it was, they followed their orders: they put him against the wall.  Tosca saw that he had been shot, without any pretence.  She walked to the parapet – walked into air without flinching – fell straight to her death.  Scarpia had had his way in everything.

Except for the small detail that when she left him, he was dead.  If he hadn’t kept his side of the unequal bargain, neither had Tosca.  He had made the mistake of sending his men out of earshot, and the double one of leaving a sharp knife on his table.  And when he tried to collect his payment, she stabbed him to the heart. 

She and Mario were true to each other for a lifetime.  A short lifetime, but still.  They lived free and they died together, while I, Marchesa Attavanti, did as my husband commanded, stayed safe, and failed them. 

I shall never know what Mario thought or foreknew when he painted me as the Magdalene, or for whom he really meant the love with which he painted her face.  But I would kneel, and put on sackcloth, and tear my hair and stretch my arms out to heaven, just as she did, if I thought that, like her, by doing so I would be forgiven.

********

Hardly any of my acquaintance ever speak of Cesare or Mario in my hearing.  It would be ill-bred.  Never mind if your brother is hunted to his death, if your only true love is tortured and killed like vermin, such things are not mentioned in polite company, and as a great lady who is never seen without an elaborate coiffure, how could you possibly wish it otherwise?  I see murderous old generals, and courtiers who have long since forgotten what truth is, strut and preen at my soirées (oh yes, I soon began giving them again), decked in ribbons and medals, honoured by all.  While Cesare and Mario, who gave their lives for justice, have no monument, and are talked of in shamefaced whispers.  Cesare at least got a decent grave.  I have never been able to find out where Mario was buried. 

But he did leave me something, after all.  Not a work of beauty and skill like the Magdalene, wantonly destroyed: a grimy piece of cheap paper, crumpled, straightened out and twice folded over.  The Chief of Police handed it to me, furtively, saying that he got it from Spoletta.  It was a letter, addressed to Floria Tosca.  Someone must have taken a bribe to let Mario write it while he waited for his death, and as Tosca was dead too, that worm Spoletta had kept it.  When his new master started asking questions, I imagine he said with a leer: ‘Who’s paying?  The Attavanti woman?  Oh yes, she was his piece too, wasn’t she?  Perhaps she should see this …’

I unfolded the letter when I was alone, terrified of the bitterness of the moment when it was written, as if it might have poisoned the paper itself. 

Did I mention what beautiful hands Mario had?  I used to watch sidelong as he was drawing: they were so steady and sure, and I used to drive myself wild by imagining … well, never mind.  The letter, not counting the address, was only a few short lines.  All it said was:


Dearest Floria.  If only I knew this would find you alive and safe, I should be content.  I am afraid to think of what you may have suffered.  Please forgive me.  I had to help him but you should never have been hurt so.

I love you until I die. 

Floria

How shall I


I sobbed with the letter in my hand, in triumph and horror and rage.  Mario had written that: the Mario I loved seemed to live still, in those few words.  They had not destroyed him, not until they killed him.  But it was not for want of trying.  Scarpia’s artists had left their signature, in the very letters that trailed across the page, wavering and broken, as if his hand would barely grasp the pen, becoming almost impossible to read, finishing in a heavy ink stroke where he must have let it fall when he could not write any more.

I have wondered many times how he might have gone on with the letter, but as to why he broke off, I believe I know.  It was not simply that his hand gave out.  It was that he could think of nothing to say that would make amends to Tosca.  She would not be able to live without him.  Even in the joy of the moment when she came to him, they must both have known it. 

Mario had so much to live for, yet he threw it all into the balance, without a second thought, out of pity for a spent force, a broken man.  He kept faith and it cost him everything.  And what good did it do?  Why did he have to die comfortless, knowing that he had not saved his friend after all, and was leaving his love despairing? 

Did he think of me at all, during that night?  I have to hope that he did not, for how could he have forgiven me?

I did not kiss the letter, or any such foolishness.  I had no right: it was Tosca’s.  But I kept it, and sometimes when I have bad dreams or hopelessness comes over me I look at it and let myself feel again a fury that I mean to use one day.  Although, who am I to talk?  When Mario died, I was sound asleep.

For Tosca, it was different.  She was loved by the common people, and they will insist on honouring the unfortunate, even those who die in not altogether polite circumstances.  There were contributions to give her a fine tomb, and there are always flowers on it.  Bunches of white roses, scattering their petals, also appear, mysteriously, at the place below the castle walls where she ended her life.  Every so often I lay some there myself.  The most widely believed story is that she threw herself down to escape being ravished; that her lover stabbed Scarpia in revenge, and was killed in turn by the soldiers.  It is not bad, but the truth is better.

It cheers me to think of how she must have used all her strength to drive that knife into Scarpia’s heart.  I want to shout encouragement to her, to tell her that I am coming to help.  Between the two of us, we could have made an even better job of it.  We could have taken longer over killing him, made him pay a fairer price for all the harm he did.  I often think how many people had cause to hate Scarpia, and how we Voltaireans, the Jacobins, the republicans planned and plotted solemnly to free our city … and yet in the end the task that none of us could accomplish, not even the might of France, was carried out by one poor simple woman whom he had pushed too far.  The goat-girl, the brainless brunette, the coarse-bred actress who, unlike a lady, knew how to fight, how to strike home when the moment came…   but she had to do it alone, and then, alone again, when there was no hope left, she chose to die. 

It seems beyond absurdity that while she and Mario were alive, I detested her and she could not bear the sight of me.  How we were almost ready to kill each other for the sake of the man we both loved, whom we would have done anything to save – and ended by sealing his fate, between us.  What does it matter, now, that he loved her better than me – what did it ever matter?  What a wicked waste that I only feel friendship for her now that they are both dead.
Peace, Tosca.  Forgive me, wherever you are, and sleep well.

********

Explanatory note by Julia Angelotti, 18 January 1860

Having taken it upon myself to arrange and preserve what letters and papers I can find relating to the Italian side of my family, the Angelotti, I should include the memoir above, which I have translated from its original Italian, written by my great-aunt, the late Maria Francesca, Marchesa Attavanti, née Angelotti, probably soon after June 1800, when the events to which it refers took place.  But I hesitate, because of the highly intimate nature of her account.  I recommend whoever takes charge of this small archive in future to exercise discretion in allowing access to it.

My father’s family was divided by the troubles in Rome in the last years of the eighteenth century.  My grandfather Adriano Angelotti departed Italy at that time and set up in trade with moderate success in England.  The light in which his brother, Cesare, appears in this account helps to explain why he was seldom spoken of in my hearing.  Their sister, Maria Francesca, childless and for many years a widow, lived in the Attavanti palace in Rome, alone except for a few servants.  She visited us a handful of times, always reluctantly.  She did not herself encourage visits.  She was an austere personage in her later years: yet she and I were fond of each other.

The Marchesa placed this writing in my hands as a direct result of an occurrence during her last visit to England, in the summer of last year, 1859.  We took part in a tour of a country house whose owner I know slightly.   In his picture gallery, my attention was caught by a beautiful small painting of a pastoral dance.  I do not think I have ever seen a painting in which there was so infectious a sense of movement.  Our host explained that the picture was a Cavaradossi, one of very few known surviving works by a Franco-Italian painter of the late eighteenth century whose promising career was cut short by political violence.  (His account implied that such tragedies were, in a sense, a fitting and unavoidable part of an artistic life, and especially to be expected in such a volatile country as Italy.)  Aunt Francesca seemed deeply affected to hear the name of the artist.  She examined the picture with close interest and showed, beyond doubt, that she had been one of its models.  She was a great beauty in her youth, and, according to family legend, much courted.

That same evening, my aunt handed me a small silk-wrapped package containing this writing, asking me to keep it carefully, but not to read it until she had returned to Italy.  In explanation, she said:
‘I never told anyone.  There were always so many secrets.  But it is wrong to carry secrets to one’s grave.’  Then she spoke of her joy in finding that not all the artist’s work had perished, but rather bitterly of our host’s summing-up of his life.  ‘People talk as if the past had to be what it was,’ I remember her saying.  ‘As if one can only sigh, and accept it.  To those who were there, and wept and fought to change it, it was otherwise.  Remember, Giulia.  Although I hope that you will know happier times.  Nothing has to be.  It is so only because people decide.  And there are some decisions that, in this world, can never be forgiven.’

And then she said very quietly: ‘To speak like that of Mario, my Mario.  It makes me feel how long ago it all was … and yet still I sometimes wake in the night thinking that it is not too late, that somehow I can save him …’

After she was gone and I had read her account, I wrote briefly to my aunt to thank her: to let her know that I had understood, without going into details that could only give her pain.  I asked her whether she would like me to make enquiries about buying Mr Harries’ painting, for although he had said he would not sell it, he might change his mind in the light of what we knew.

However, I received a letter by return from a cousin of the Marchesa saying that she had died peacefully at her home, the day before my letter arrived.  There was no time for me to travel to attend her funeral, but I sent my condolences to her cousin, Umberto, and he was kind enough to invite me to meet him on my next visit to Italy.

We fell into reminiscences of Aunt Francesca, first guarded, then rather less so. I remarked that she seemed to blame herself for events in the past that she had been powerless to change.  He looked left and right, along the vine-grown terrace on which we were walking: in Italy one grew used to such circumspection.  Then he said:

‘And yet it is almost certain that few people have done more to change this country than the Marchesa, in the course of her life.’

I expressed surprise.  My ramrod-backed aunt, never seen without a black lace veil over her snowy white hair, looking as if she herself had not changed in a hundred years …

‘Yes,’ he insisted.  ‘No one knows: that is the measure of her success.  After she was widowed, she lived as a recluse, but she fostered every reform movement in Italy, she kept her hands on all the threads … Believe me, there was very little that was not discussed, behind the blind shutters of that old palazzo.  She helped the 1830 insurrections.  The revolutions of 1848 would never have broken out in so many of the states of Italy at once without her, although she was already an old woman.  And although they failed, the failure would have been bloodier still but for her.  She saved scores of lives.  She played a long game … and now, I believe, in another year or two Italy will be unified, and no longer a despotism, perhaps even the Republic she always dreamed of, although she did not live to see it.  The Marchesa did not waste her life.’

What would the Marchesa herself have thought of this judgement, I wonder? 


I do not know how much Umberto knew of that earlier episode in her life.  A feeling of tact forbade me to mention the details, and I certainly never asked whether he knew anything of that other, shorter document that she had kept, although it was not hers: the letter that Mario Cavaradossi had written to his beloved, the day they both died.  I imagine that it was too precious and painful to her to be shared even with me.  It seems most likely that she had it buried with her, without letting anyone know what it was.

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