"Your majesty," said the count, "all we who take part in this great work are Italians, and we desire to see Italy free and happy. We wish to regard the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom in the north of our peninsula as blood of our blood, and flesh of our flesh; we are therefore willing to restore Lombardy into the hands of your majesty and to the house of Hapsburg, but not to Austria."
"How will you make the distinction?" asked the emperor, with a shade of annoyance.
"I believe," replied the count, "this distinction is the greatest proof we could give of the reverence in which we hold your imperial majesty. It would not become me," he continued, "nor am I called upon, to give your majesty any views upon the government of those states which form the Austrian empire; I must, however, remark, that according to my perceptions--and I think I have history on my side--throughout the whole of Austria there is but one common bond of union, the emperor and the army."
The emperor bowed a somewhat reluctant assent.
"The truth of this, so far as Italy is concerned, is incontestable," continued the count. "No one in Lombardy and Venice, nor indeed, throughout the whole country, has the smallest objection to the rule of the house of Hapsburg; but what hurt the national feeling, what alienated the well disposed, was the German rule, which we were made to feel in your majesty's Italian states: the rule was a foreign one, and it felt to the people like a foreign occupation. If your majesty will permit your Italian subjects to be Italian, all repugnance will vanish."
The emperor was silent, appearing not entirely to understand.
"Allow me, your majesty," said the count, "to disclose to you the picture, which stands in dazzling clearness before my mental gaze. When my poor country fell under the hellish power which now oppresses it, I thought out for it a united organization, somewhat similar to the great confederation which unites Germany. In the south the kingdom of the two Sicilies, in the heart the patrimony of St. Peter, and in the north, up to its natural boundaries, rescued Sardinia, the smaller dukedoms and the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom. At the head of this confederation, for the developing of institutions for trade and commerce and for the welfare and cultivation of these states, bound together by a common spirit of nationality, stands the Holy Father, the head of Christendom, your imperial majesty occupying the place of his powerful earthly protector; and if the arms of Austria conquer in Germany, as I pray they may, we shall behold the Roman emperor, from Sicily to the northern sea, the honoured and beloved protector of right, and the umpire of Europe."
The count bowed, and was silent. He had latterly spoken with more excitement, and his sparkling eyes seemed to see, in dazzling completeness, the picture he had just sketched out for the emperor.
Francis Joseph had listened with kindling eyes; and Klindworth had stolen quick glances, now at the emperor now at the count, whilst he stood perfectly still without appearing to-take any interest in the conversation.
"What you have disclosed to me, my dear Count Rivero, interests me in the highest degree," said the emperor, "and I rejoice that your communications have been made at the present moment. Your plans coincide with the wishes I must always bear in my heart, as the heir of my ancestors and the head of my house."