my disappointment and resentment, diverted his eyes from mine.
Returning to his rooms, he brushed me with his hand and whispered: “I’m sorry to have disappointed you like that, but I can’t do anything about it”
If I could have, I would have given him a stinging reply, such as I often reserved for annoying people when I was at my father’s court, but it was not the time and place and I bit my tongue, limiting myself to say goodbye to him with a nod of my head.
The situation was paradoxical: on the one hand, the mourning and the preparations for the solemn funeral, on the other, the wedding feast having gone down in flames and equally frenetic preparations for our departure for Italy.
I saw with anxiety the time approaching for me to find myself side by side with Leopold in the narrow carriage ride for days and days.
Every so often we met, but we still had never yet slept together, him being very weak (and I suppose very weak also in spirit from that succession of unpleasant or painful events).
The evening before our departure, we went to say goodbye to the Empress and she, notwithstanding her grief, had kind words for me and gave her son her instructions and recommendations. My husband was tense and silent and I, once more, felt cast aside without any consideration.
I retired soon to my apartments with my heart full of contradicting feelings.
Firstly, sadness and melancholy, secondly, resentment for the evident indifference that my husband seemed to harbour for me, thirdly, curiosity about the places that I was getting ready to see during the long journey, which would take us towards that land in Tuscany that they said was so beautiful and rich in art, finally, a good dose of anxiety about the start of my new married life, with all that that would entail.
I was naturally not sleepy and, when my maid and my ladies-in-waiting had withdrawn, I started to read a book.
Reading was my passion and, even though my culture was not the highest, I tried to always find some new work to improve it.
That evening, however, it was a book of poetry which I had brought with me from Madrid and which I had never opened since then.
I had been told that in Florence I would find a rich and lively cultural life and that I would be able to indulge myself at my leisure among works of art and libraries. It was a thing which consoled me a little, but only a little.
At a certain point, I heard light knocking at the door and, without looking up, said: “Come in” - expecting one of the maids had come to ask, as always, if I needed anything.
The door opened silently - “I don’t need anything, thank you” - I said - “you can go to bed”.
Not hearing a reply, I finally lifted up my eyes from the book and gasped: in front of me was Leopold.
I leapt up from the armchair, making the book fall to the ground with a dull thud.
He signalled me to keep quiet and knelt down to pick up the book. He handed it to me with a smile.
- “You don’t mind, do you, that I have come to find you?” - he then asked, almost timidly - “I couldn’t sleep. You neither, I see”.
I didn’t know what to say, I felt my heart beating furiously.
- “Who told you that I was still up?”
I blushed –
- “No-one, but” -
- “And if I had been already in bed?”
- “You're my wife after all” - he objected – “don’t I have the right to enter my wife’s bedroom?”
- “I’m not your wife yet” - I responded, embittered - “And you, it seems, don’t care about it very much.”
His eyes became dark and narrow, like two cracks - “Do you want to provoke me? Do you perhaps believe that I am not capable, if I wanted, of asserting my rights over you in every way? But I did not want our life together -”
- “That you abhor just thinking about it” - I interrupted him - “because all you do is compare me in your heart with the one you lost and you find that I am ugly and insignificant in comparison with her. Thus you feel you have the right to reject me, to keep me away from you and your heart and accuse me of wanting to take the place not asked for. But you know, like me, that neither of us has been free to choose and I certainly am not to blame if they separated you from her. Will you reproach me for this lost love for all your life? Why then haven’t you fought for her? Like a tiger you should have pulled out your claws and instead you are closed in yourself, stewing until you put your own life in danger. I well know that you don’t love me and perhaps you never will and if you ever come into my bed, it will be because the sovereign rights and loyalty to the Imperial family call you there. But do you perhaps believe that it’s different for me? You have kept me away from you since the first moment and now - now you come and tell me” -
The tears choked the words in my throat, I tried to swallow them to take control of my emotions again - “Please, go away, I want to be alone.
Leopold remained in silence listening to my bitter outburst.
- “Calm down” - he murmured - “and forgive me. I repeat that I don’t want to force you against your will. You accuse me of not being able to forget, but not even your heart is really as free as you want to make it look. I don’t want us to start our life together so badly. It has been a terrible month, this last one, and I must still take back the reins of myself. I only wanted to talk with you for a bit.”
He took one of my hands and with the other dried the tears which were running down my face. He made me sit down again in the armchair in which I had sunk on his arrival. He sat at my feet and indicated the book he had in his hand.
- “What were you reading, may I know?”
- “Poetry”.
- “Yes, if I remember well you are very poetical, especially when you talk of the sea and the starry skies. We haven’t had much sun lately, have we? But I believe we will find it soon, when we are far from here, in Italy, you and I alone.”
- “Do you think so?”
- “Certainly, trust me and be my friend. I need it.”
I looked at him and saw that he was sincere.
- “Would you like to read me one of those poems?”
- “They are in Spanish; do you understand it?”
- “Just a little, but it’s not too different from Italian, if I remember well, and I understand that perfectly. At the Florence court, we will speak Italian obviously and I am fully committed to learn it properly. You naturally have an advantage, seeing that you were born in Italy.”
- ”But I have a Neapolitan accent you could cut with a knife and, according to my teachers, this was not good. They despaired about it.”
- “You will learn also Florentine. We will learn it together, if you wish” - he added.
I smiled at the idea of the two of us, like little schoolchildren, appling
