Cavour returned to Turin without bringing, as Massimo d'Azeglio expressed it, "even the smallest duchy in his pocket"; yet satisfied with his work, for he rightly judged that, though there was no material gain, the moral victory was complete. The recalcitration of Austria, which had reached the point of threatening war if Parma were joined to Piedmont, contained the germs of her dissolution as an Italian power. The temporal power of the Pope had been called in question for the first time, not in the lodge of a secret society, but in the council chamber of Europe. Beaten on the lower plane, Cavour had won on the higher; checked as a Piedmontese, he was triumphant as an Italian. In spite of the approval voted by both Houses of Parliament, some shade of disappointment existed in Piedmont, but throughout Italy there was exultation. The Tuscan patriots sent the statesman a bust of himself, with the happily chosen inscription: "Colui che la difese a viso aperto."[1]
[Footnote 1: "He who defended her with open face" (Dante).]
The position of Piedmont after the Congress of Paris was one to which it would be difficult to find a parallel. States are commonly at peace or at war; if at peace, even where there are smouldering enmities, an appearance is kept up of mutual toleration. But in Piedmont the king, government, and people were already morally at war with Austria. When Cavour said in the Chamber that the two months during which he sat side by side with the Austrian plenipotentiaries had left in his mind no personal animus against them, as he was glad to admit their generally courteous conduct, but the most intimate conviction that any understanding between the two countries was unattainable, he was certainly aware of the grave significance of his words. Great solutions were not the work of the pen, and diplomacy was powerless to change the fate of peoples: these were the conclusions which he brought away from Congress. Every one knew that they meant war. Except for the order for marching, the truce imposed by Novara was broken. Those who had been edified by Cavour's cautious language in Paris stood aghast. It was well enough that Piedmont should protest in a calm, academic way, but protest was now abandoned for defiance. The change was the more unwelcome, because both in France and England the pendulum of the clock was swinging towards Austria. Napoleon disliked to commit himself to any policy, and after seeming to adopt one side he invariably swayed to the other. There was not the same intentional inconsistency in England, but the fact that Austria was undergoing a detachment from Russia improved her relations with England. Lord Palmerston suspected Cavour of being too friendly with Russia. In addition to this, there was a real fear in England lest Piedmont should pay dearly for what was considered its rashness. The British Government put the question to Cavour, whether it would not be better to disarm the opposition of Austria by depriving her of every plausible reason for combating the policy of Piedmont? He replied that only Count Solaro de la Margherita and his friends could live on amicable terms with the oppressors of Italy; England was at liberty to renew her old alliance with Austria if she chose, but upon that ground he could not follow her; Lord Palmerston might end where Lord Castlereagh began, but they would remain faithful to their principles whatever happened.
Two causes tended to prolong a coldness that was new in the intercourse between England and Piedmont. One was the frontier question of Bolgrad, in which, however, Cavour finally acted as mediator, his suggestion being accepted both by the English and the Russian Governments. The other was the Cagliari affair: the Cagliari, a Sardinian merchant ship, which carried the ill-fated expedition of Pisacane to Sapri, was captured by the Neapolitan Government, and the crew, two of whom were English, were taken in chains to Salerno. At first the English Foreign Office seemed inclined to back up an energetic demand for restitution, but afterwards it deprecated strong measures, and left Sardinia somewhat in the lurch. Circumstances combined, therefore, to render Cavour isolated, but he understood that this was a reason to advance, not to retreat. Had Sardinia seemed to bend to the peaceable advice of her friends abroad, her ascendency in Italy would have been gone for ever. Cavour drilled the army, and drew nearer to those great popular forces that were destined to make Italy, which could be freed, but never regenerated, by the sword. Piedmontese statesmen had always looked askance at these forces; Cavour was becoming fully alive to the vast motive power they would place in the hands of the man who could command them, and whom they could not command. He was free from the caste prejudices which caused many even good patriots of that date to hold the masses in horror. If he had prejudices they were against the men of his own order. Once, in summing up the results of an unsatisfactory general election, he wrote: "A dozen marquises, two dozen counts, without reckoning barons and cavalieri—it was enough to drive one mad!" When he had to do with men born of the people, he instinctively treated them on a perfect equality, not a common trait, if the truth were told. In August 1856 an event took place which had far-reaching consequences: the first interview between Cavour and Garibaldi. Cavour was one of Garibaldi's earliest admirers; he applauded his exploits at Montevideo and at Rome, when the old Piedmontese party tried to belittle him and obliged Charles Albert to decline his services. In one way the hero was a man after the minister's own heart: he was absolutely practical; he might be obstinate or rash, but he was no doctrinaire. Cavour never changed his opinion of people, and even after the General became his enemy he still admired and esteemed him. In 1856 he received him with flattering courtesy, the first recognition he had met with from any person in authority in his own state, from which, after 1849, he had been, not exactly banished, but invited to depart. During the same autumn Cavour began to see much of Giuseppe La Farina, a Sicilian exile, who was intimately connected with the new party, which, despairing alike of the existing governments and of the republic, took for its watchword, "Italy under Victor Emmanuel." In the first instance, La Farina was commissioned to ask Cavour to explain his views. His answer was perfectly frank. He had faith, he said, in the ultimate union of Italy in one state, with Rome for its capital; but he was not sufficiently acquainted with the other provinces to know whether the country was ripe for so great a transformation. He was minister of the king of Sardinia, and he could not and ought not to do anything which would compromise the dynasty. If the Italians were really ready for unity, he had the hope that the opportunity of getting it would not be very long delayed; meanwhile, as not one of his political friends believed in its possibility, the cause would only be injured were it known that he had direct dealings with the men who were working for it. He was willing to receive La Farina whenever he liked, but on the understanding that he came in the morning before it was light, and that, if Parliament or diplomacy got wind of their relations, he should reply that he knew nothing about him. The interviews took place almost daily for four years, without any one knowing of them. Some hours before dawn La Farina ascended the narrow secret staircase which led directly to Cavour's bedroom, and he was gone when the city awakened. In spite of the almost melodramatic complexion of these secret meetings, it must not be supposed, as some have supposed, that Cavour pulled the wires of all the conspiracies in Italy. His visitor kept him informed of the progress made, the propaganda carried on, but he rarely interfered. He still thought that his own business was to make Piedmont an object-lesson in constitutional monarchy, and to get the Austrians out of Italy. That done, the country, left to itself, must decide whether it would unite or not.
After the Congress of Paris, Cavour took the Foreign Office in addition to the Ministry of Finance. He could not trust either of these departments to other hands; and the country approved, for the conviction gained ground that, whether he was mad or not, only he could extricate it from the situation into which he had drawn it. When one senator called him a dictator, he retorted that, if Parliament refused him its support, he should go away, which was not the habit of dictators. But the mere threat of resignation brought the most recalcitrant to reason. Thus he continued to obtain large sums to carry out the works he deemed necessary, one of the greatest of which was the transfer of the arsenal from Genoa to Spezia—a step which angered the Genoese on one side, and on the other the old conservatives, who asked what had little Piedmont to do with big fleets? "But the fact was," Count Solaro said with a sneer, "the Prime Minister had all Italy in view, and was preparing for the future kingdom." Cavour also forced Parliament to vote the supplies required for undertaking the boring of Mont Cenis, which most of the deputies expected would be a total failure. In proposing this vote he declared that they must advance or perish. He was delighted with a phrase with which Lord Palmerston concluded a congratulatory letter sent to the Sardinian legation in London, and written in elegant Italian: "Henceforth no one will talk of the works of the ancient Romans." This little episode wiped out the last traces of misunderstanding between the two statesmen, who became again what fate had meant them to be, friends and fellow-workers. Cavour's budgets had the inherent defect that they continued to show increased expenditure and a deficit, but no minister who had lacked the power and the courage to brave criticism by a financial policy which would have been certainly indefensible if Piedmont alone was concerned, could have done what he did. Meanwhile, on the whole, the economic state of the country improved in spite of heavy taxation: the exports and imports increased; there were signs of industrial activity; agriculture revived. Cavour was often bitterly blamed for favouring and sparing the landowning class, though whether he did this because he had estates at Leri, as his detractors alleged, or because agriculture must always be the most vital of all Italian interests, need not be discussed now. Improved education stimulated enterprise. That there was room for improvement may be supposed, when it is known that in 1848 the number of persons who could not read was three to one to the number of those who could.
The most severe phase in the financial difficulties was past when, at the beginning of 1858, Cavour consigned the exchequer to Lanza, assuming himself the Ministry of the Interior, which was vacant through the resignation of Rattazzi. The breach between the two men, who were never in entire intellectual harmony, had been growing inevitable for some months. It was final; Cavour resolved never again to have Rattazzi for a colleague. The elections of the autumn before, which Cavour thought that Rattazzi had mismanaged, lessened his confidence in him; but the actual cause of their rupture was briefly this. Cavour wished to put an end to the king's relations with the Countess Mirafiori, whom he married by the rite of the Church during his serious illness near Pisa in 1868—an interference in the private affairs of the sovereign which, though inspired by regard for the decorum of the Crown, must be admitted to have been unwise, as (amongst other reasons) it was certain not to attain its object. In this matter Cavour thought that Rattazzi ought to have stood by him, instead of which he took the part of the deeply offended king, who went so far as to say that only his position and his duty to the country prevented him from challenging his prime minister then and there.
CHAPTER VIII
THE PACT OF PLOMBIÈRES
Time seems long to those who wait. The thrill of expectancy that passed through Italy after the Congress of Paris was succeeded by the nervous tension that seizes people whose ears are strained to catch some sound which never comes. Especially in Lombardy there was a feeling of great depression: no one trusted now in revolution, which the watchfulness of the Austrians made as impossible as their careless belief in their own invulnerability had made it possible in 1848. The years went by, and help from without appeared farther off than ever. Meanwhile every interest suffered, and life was rendered wellnigh intolerable by the ceaseless antagonism between government and governed. This was the state of things when the Archduke Maximilian came to Milan full of genuine love for the Emperor's Italian subjects and of determination to right their wrongs. "I much admire M. de Cavour," he said to a Prussian diplomatist, "but when it is a question of a policy of progress, I am not going to let him outdo me." On his side Cavour remarked, "That Archduke is persevering, and will not be discouraged, but I am persevering too, and will not let myself be discouraged." Nevertheless, if there was one thing that Cavour had always feared, it was Austrian conciliation. The gift of a milder rule would change the aspect of the whole question before Europe, and only those ignorant of human nature could suppose that it would entirely fail in its effect with a population which was beginning to be hopeless. Cavour viewed the experiment not without anxiety, but he guessed that the good intentions of Maximilian would be frustrated by the Viennese Government. The forecast was verified, but meanwhile the simple fact that an Austrian archduke had set his heart on winning the affections of the Lombards and Venetians was taken everywhere as a sign favourable to peace.
Then happened the unforeseen event which marks with almost unfailing regularity the turning points in history. On January 14, 1858, Felice Orsini tried to assassinate Napoleon III and failed. His failure was strange. The bomb thrown under the carriage which conveyed the Emperor and Empress to the opera did not explode. An accomplice was arrested with another in his hand, which he had not time to throw. Many of the passers-by received fatal or serious injuries. Of the previous attempts on Napoleon's life none was prepared with such seeming certainty of success. If others were planned with equal deliberation, could the result be doubted? Napoleon was probably putting this question to himself when he appeared in his box, with an impassible face, while the conspirators on the stage sang the chorus of the oaths in Guillaume Tell. Not a cheer greeted the sovereigns, though what had occurred in the street was immediately known. When the first report reached Turin, Cavour exclaimed, "If only this is not the work of Italians!" On receiving the particulars with the name of Orsini, he remembered that this Romagnol revolutionist had written to him nine months before, offering his services to whatever Italian Government, "not the Papacy," would place its army at the disposal of the national independence, and urging the Sardinian ministers to take a daring course, in which they would have all Italy with them. Cavour did not answer the letter, "because it was noble and energetic, and he thought it unbecoming in him to pay Orsini compliments." If he had summoned Orsini to Piedmont, the attempt in the Rue le Peletier would never have taken place.