Not only was Nigra possessed of great intellectual powers, he was the handsomest of men, and that fact contributed in no small degree to his success in diplomacy. Count Cavour had a great friend in the Comtesse de Circourt, née Anastasie de Klustine, whose salon was the resort of many political and literary celebrities. She helped to “launch” Nigra, to whom she wrote: “What strikes one so forcibly is the perfect harmony of your youth with the maturity of your look. M. D---- says your profile reminds him of a Greek statue. And he is right.” Nigra took up his abode at the hotel of the Italian Embassy (formerly the home of the Piedmontese Legation), at the Rond Point of the Champs-Elysées, and was soon made much of, for his reputation had preceded him. Cavour had written to his friends in Paris: “Nigra knows all my thoughts,” and that alone was sufficient to insure the young diplomatist’s success.
Nigra’s rôle was a very difficult one. He had to conciliate French diplomatists, to keep “well in” with the Emperor, and to avoid creating jealousy amongst the foreign Ambassadors and Ministers. Above all, he had to secure the goodwill of the Empress Eugénie, who had no love for a Government which was attacking the temporal power of the Pope. But Nigra succeeded. How he did it is still a mystery. He got on terms of intimacy with the Emperor and Empress, and even stifled the jealousy of Prince Metternich.
Nigra was not only a diplomatist and a handsome man--“beau comme Apollon”--but a poet. One afternoon (it was a soft June day in 1863) the imperial hostess and some of her guests were trying a Venetian gondola on the lake at Fontainebleau. The Empress asked the gondolier to sing something appropriate; but the man declared that Nature had not endowed him with a voice. But Nigra was there, and Nigra would sing. He warbled in those beautiful, seductive tones which had struck responsive chords in the hearts of many before he had bewitched the imperial lady, the favourite “Gondola,” which he had himself written and submitted to Prosper Mérimée, who was pleased to approve it. The singer ended with these daring lines:
Oh femme, si parfois ton lac paisible doit voir voguant sur tes côtes le muet Empéreur, dis-lui que sur les rives de l’Adriatique, pauvre, nue, exsangue Venise souffre et languit. Mais elle vit ... et elle attend encore. (Oh lady, if sometimes thy peaceful lake sees wandering by thy side the dumb Emperor, tell him that, on the shores of the Adriatic, poor, naked, bloodless Venice suffers and languishes. But she lives ... and she is still expectant.)