In her early youth she began several literary works, among which a rather inaccurate translation of some of Shakespeare’s plays has come down to us. She was a literary personage, however, when still young, and the drawing-rooms of the Palazzo Michiel were frequented by all that was most distinguished in Venice, as well as by the best of the foreign element. Giustina, like all women who succeed in gathering intellectual people about them, encouraged the discussion of all sorts of subjects from the broadest point of view. At that time she was slightly inclined towards the new order of ideas, and boasted of being somewhat democratic; but if this was true, it did not prevent her from sincerely lamenting the fall of the Republic a few years later.
On the twelfth of May 1797, after the fatal session which ended the history of Venice, a few nobles gathered at her house to mourn over the sudden end. While they sat together, heavy-hearted and conversing in broken sentences, they heard the rabble in the street below, howling at those whom it called the assassins of Saint Mark. The little group upstairs understood the danger, and after a moment’s silence Giustina called upon them to save the city at least, if they could no longer save the Republic. Her cousin Bernardino Renier was there, and was temporarily charged with seeing to the safety of the city. The only means he could think of for preventing pillage was violence, and he swept the streets with artillery.
For a while Giustina cherished the vain hope that Bonaparte would help Venice to rise from her ashes. That fact explains why she was willing to receive in her house the handsome, fair-haired Marina Benzon, who danced round the tree of liberty in the Square of Saint Mark’s with the ‘Carmagnola’ on her head, on the day that saw the Venetian flag replaced by the Phrygian cap of liberty. It explains, too, why Giustina was in
1809.
the square ten years later, when Napoleon came to Venice a second time. It was a singular meeting enough.
When the Emperor was passing his troops in review in the square, Bernardino Renier pointed out his cousin Giustina, who was in the crowd looking on, and Napoleon at once sent two officers to bring her to him. The story is that the Emperor planted himself before her with his arms crossed and his legs apart.
‘What are you celebrated for?’ he asked roughly.
‘I, sire? Celebrated?’ cried the lady.
‘Yes, you. But to what do you owe your celebrity?’
‘To friendship, no doubt, which attributes to me an importance I do not possess.’