“Except those devoted to preaching, education, and the care of the sick,” I observed, parenthetically.
“Ah! bah! that was but an insignificant exception. Where was I? Well, in such an emergency the marquis surmounted his scruples, took his seat in the upper chamber, and voted against the ministry. If his resistance was unavailing, at least he had the satisfaction of raising a noble protest in the church's behalf.”
“And that other old man, with the quick keen eye, who is sitting on the bishop's right?”
“That is the pillar of our cause, Count Solaro della Margherita. You have surely heard of him?”
Assuredly I had. Who that lives in Piedmont, or has read anything of Italian contemporary history, is not familiar with his name? For many years the absolute minister of Charles Albert, and now head of the extreme right, as it is termed, in the chamber of deputies, that small, very small section of the national representatives, which only avails itself of the privilege of sitting in parliament to endeavour to overthrow the liberties secured to the kingdom by the charter of 1848. Forty or fifty years hence the memoirs of this statesman will reveal some curious secrets. Throughout Italy he is, whether justly or not I do not pretend to say, accused of having thwarted the late King Charles Albert in every liberal design; and, strong in the support of Austria and the Jesuits, to have retarded by some years the reforms which that monarch had long been desirous of introducing.
“The young abbé, comtesse, who has just come in, so studied in his dress, his hair so glossy, surely he must be Don Margotti?”
“Quite right. You doubtless know all about him? Our literary champion. Yonder is his patron, the Marquis Birago.”
Both were well known to me by reputation. The young priest is editor of the “Armonia,” the chief organ of the clericals,—for by this as well as the terms codini, obscurantists, absolutists, and retrogrades, is that party equally designated,—and author of a book against England, which made a great deal of noise in Piedmont last winter. Its title was “Roma e Londra;” its purport being to demonstrate that, materially, intellectually, as well as spiritually, the Papal States were far in advance of Great Britain. The Marquis Birago, celebrated in his young days as a diplomatist and gay man of the world, has devoted his latter years to combating the spread of reform. The nominal director of the “Armonia,” he has given up the ground-floor of his palace at Turin to its printing-press and offices, and out of his own income makes up the yearly deficit in its finances; the very fact of there being a deficit at all arguing ill for the state of the public mind, not in Piedmont merely, but in the rest of the peninsula, where, of all the Sardinian newspapers, the “Armonia,” and one or two others of the same family, alone enjoy free circulation.
Besides all these claims to consideration, peculiar interest just then attached itself to the marquis and his protégé. Returned as deputies at the beginning of the winter, their elections had recently been declared invalid on the ground of religious intimidation exercised upon the voters by the parish priest; and the result of a new canvass proving unfavourable, nothing remained for them but to assume the palm of political martyrdom.
“Talk of liberty, comtesse!” cried a very infirm old general, whom I remembered having heard of as one of the incapables in the first campaign of Lombardy, as, quite excited from a conversation with the victims, he broke the formal circle, and drew a chair in front of her: “talk of liberty, why, M. de Cavour in this late affair has shown himself a perfect despot—a despot without reason or conscience! Who are to advise the common people to use their rights, since they are forsooth to have them, except their natural counsellors, their priests and spiritual directors?”