A book on railways by Count Petitti had been prohibited in Piedmont.  That railways were connected with the Powers of Darkness was then a general opinion, shared in particular by Pope Gregory.  Cavour reviewed the book in the Revue nouvelle, which was also prohibited, but sundry copies of it were smuggled into Italy, and one even reached the king.  While Petitti had avoided all political allusions, Cavour’s article abounds in them:  railways would promote the moral union of Italy, which must precede the conquest of national independence.  Municipal jealousies, intellectual backwardness, would disappear, and, when that happened, nothing could prevent the accomplishment of the object which was the passionate desire of all—­emancipation.  A very small number of ideas forms the intellectual hinge of man in the aggregate; of these patriotism is only second in importance to religion.  Any conception of national dignity in the masses was impossible without the pride of nationality.  Every private interest, every political dissension, should be laid aside that Italian independence might become a fact.  Cavour always spoke of Italy—­not of Piedmont, not of Lombardy and Venetia.  Rome, still of all cities the richest in precious memories and splendid hopes, would be the centre of an iron network uniting the whole peninsula.  Some well-intentioned patriots objected to the increase of railway communication with Austria from the fear that it would strengthen her military and political hold over her Italian provinces.  Cavour answered that the great events at hand could not be delayed by the shortening of the number of hours between Vienna and Milan.  On the other hand, when the relations arising out of conquest were replaced by those of friendship and equity, rapid communication would promote the moral and intellectual intercourse, “which, more than any one, we desire,” between grave and profound Germany and intelligent Italy.  In these pages Cavour foreshadowed the boring of the Alps and the German alliance, two facts which then seemed equally improbable.

The man was made; he waited for his opportunity.  What if it never came?  Can we conceive Cavour’s immense energy limited to a rice-field?  Are there really men whom their lot forbids—­

  Th’ applause of list’ning senates to command,
    The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
  To scatter plenty o’er a smiling land,
    And read their hist’ry in a nation’s eyes?

The prophet may cry aloud in the desert, the scientific discoverer may guess at truths which his age rejects, but the total waste of such a force as the mind of Cavour seems less easy to imagine than that his appearance was a sign that the times were ripe for him.

CHAPTER III

THE JOURNALIST