Not a man in the crowd at Turin dared to anticipate such a result:  yet their joy was frantic.  Fifty thousand people, arranged in guilds, defiled before the king, who sat like a statue on his bay horse, upright and impassible.  Cavour walked in the company of journalists, and all those who had opposed him a few weeks before were there too, with Valerio at their head.  They sang their strophe of Mameli’s hymn, “Fratelli d’Italia,” very badly.  Cavour whispered to his neighbour, “We are so many dogs!”

That neighbour, a Milanese named Giuseppe Torelli, has left an interesting description of Cavour’s appearance as it was then.  He was fresh-coloured, and his blue eyes had not yet lost their brightness, but they were so changeful in expression that it was difficult to fix their distinctive quality.  Though rather stout he was not ungainly, as he tended to become later.  He stooped a little, and two narrow lines were visible on either side of a mouth, cold and uneffusive; but these lines, by their trembling or contraction, showed the play of inward emotion which the rest of the face concealed.  In after days people used to watch them in order to guess his state of mind.  It was his large and solid forehead that chiefly gave the idea of power which every one who saw him carried away, despite of the want of dignity in his person and of strongly-marked features in his face.  His manners were simple, but distinguished by an unmistakably aristocratic ease and courtesy.  He spoke generally low and without emphasis, and always appeared to pay great attention to what was said to him, even by the least important person.

Nothing, on the face of it, could seem more extraordinary than the exclusion of Cavour from office in the momentous year of 1848.  But he had no popular party at his back whose cry could overrule the disinclination which the king certainly felt towards making him his Minister.  Moreover, his abilities, though now generally recognised, contributed to keeping him in the background:  it was felt instinctively that if he got the reins there would be only one driver.  He was known to be indifferent to criticism, and while he listened patiently to advice, he rarely took it.  He had mortally offended the conservatives by the liberalism of his means, and the liberals by the conservatism of his ends.  Count Balbo, on assuming the office of the first Prime Minister under the Statute, not only retired from the directing council of the Risorgimento, but went out of his way to disavow the policy supported in it by Cavour.  “The little rascal,” he was heard to say, “will end by ruining the splendid edifice raised by the wisdom and moderation of so many estimable men!” The splendid edifice was on the verge of being nearly ruined, but by timidity—­which has lost a score of thrones,—­not by audacity.  The new Cabinet entered upon their duties on March 16.  Two days later occurred an event utterly unforeseen—­the rising of Milan against the