A Venetian Affair by Andrea Di Robilant Page A

more drastic to placate her. He went about it in a manner that revealed his own penchant for intrigue:
    This is a difficult thing to ask, but you are so easy, so free from
prejudice, you have such a good spirit and are always so obliging
with me that it is possible you might grant me this favor. Lucrezia
torments me by always asking if she can see some of your letters
to me—which I have never permitted her to do. Therefore I would
like for you to write me a letter in French in which you praise her.
You might add in passing that, while not jealous of her, you do
think she is too intelligent not to realize that it would be preferable if I were not seen so often with her. She already knows all the
love I have for you and your commitment to me. I assure you that
the only reason I am asking you to do this is so that she will convince herself that I am in love with a woman more special than
her. . . . If you’re not up to it, it doesn’t really matter. It’s enough
that you love me.
    Giustiniana was uncomfortable with this sort of game playing. A little deception to avoid Mrs. Anna’s controls and to meet Andrea on the sly was one thing. But she found his recourse to artifice for the sake of artifice a little unsettling. The ease with which he could transform himself from the most tender and loving companion to the craftiest manipulator was a trait that seemed embedded in his character. And whereas Lucrezia, an experienced operator herself, would probably not have given Andrea’s behavior great significance, Giustiniana found it much harder to understand. She too had a seductive side, a propensity to flirt with men both young and old. But excessive ambiguity made her ill at ease. She held fast to a rule of love that was not very common among other young Venetians: the exclusivity of romantic feelings. So she was stunned to hear, when she went over to the Morosinis’ for lunch shortly after the Lucrezia episode, that Andrea was also flirting with Mariettina Corner, another well-known seductress. Mariettina’s love life was complicated enough as it was: she was married to Lucrezia’s brother, had an official lover and was having an affair with yet a third man, Piero Marcello—a gambler and philanderer who happened to be a neighbor of the Wynnes’. Giustiniana was told that though Mariettina was carrying on the relationship with Piero, it was really Andrea she had her eyes on.
    Again she confronted him, and again he blamed her for believing every scrap of gossip floating around the Morosinis’: “What are they telling you, these people with whom you seem to enjoy yourself so much? And why do you believe them if you know they hate me? You accuse me of making love to Mariettina. . . . But why is it you always fear I’m causing you offense with all the women I see?”
    The story of Andrea’s presumed affair with Mariettina had all the ingredients of a Goldoni farce. It turned out that Andrea, at Mariettina’s request, had acted as a go-between in her secret romance with Piero. And Giustiniana—as Andrea was quick to remind her—had even encouraged him to take on that role because she felt that as long as Mariettina was busy with other men she would not present a threat to her. But Andrea’s comings and goings between the two lovers had provided the gossipmongers with plenty to talk about. In the ensuing confusion Giustiniana didn’t know whom to believe. Andrea acknowledged that “some people might well have thought Mariettina had developed an interest in me. . . . After all, I was constantly whispering in her ear and she was whispering in mine. . . . She talked to me, gestured to me, sat next to me while apparently not caring a hoot about [her lover], her husband—indeed the world.” He insisted it was all a terrible misunderstanding: he was innocent and Giustiniana was “stupid” if she bothered “to spend a moment on all this talk the Morosinis fill your head with.”
    It wasn’t easy for her to dismiss the