One of the ministers, Count Pietro di Santa Rosa, died within a few months of the bill on the Foro becoming law, and the last sacraments were denied to him because he refused to sign a retractation of the political acts of the cabinet of which he was a member.  Cavour was an old friend of Santa Rosa.  He was present when he died, and he heard from the Countess the particulars of the distressing scene when the priest in the harshest manner withheld the consolations of religion from the dying man, who was a pious Catholic, but who had the strength of mind even in death not to dishonour himself and his colleagues.  Cavour wrote an indignant article in the Risorgimento denouncing the party spite which could cause such cruel anguish under a religious cloak, and the people of Turin became so much excited that if the further indignity of a refusal of Christian burial had been resorted to, as at first seemed probable, the lives of the priests in the city would hardly have been safe.  Everything seemed to point to Cavour as Santa Rosa’s successor, but Massimo d’Azeglio felt nervous at taking the final step.  He was encouraged to it by General La Marmora, the friend of both, who declared that “Camillo was a gran buon diavolo,” who would grow more moderate when “with us.”  Cavour accepted the offered post of Minister of Agriculture and Commerce, but not without making terms.  He exacted the retirement of a minister whom he considered incurably timorous, especially in ecclesiastical legislation.  The point was yielded, but D’Azeglio said to La Marmora, “We are beginning badly with your buon diavolo.”  The good Massimo got no comfort from the king:  “Don’t you see that this man will turn you all out?” Victor Emmanuel casually remarked, or rather he made use of a stronger idiom in his native dialect, which would not well bear translation.  The king refrained from opposing the appointment, but he did not pretend that he liked it.

About that time Cavour paid a visit to the Piedmontese shore of the Lago Maggiore, where he made the acquaintance of the author of the Promessi Sposi.  Perhaps by reason of his poetic instinct Manzoni expected great things of him from the first.  “That little man promises very well,” he told the poet Berchet.  And he opened his heart to Cavour, telling him that dream of Italian unity which he had always cherished, but which, as he said in his old age, he kept a secret for fear of being thought a madman.  They looked across the blue line of water; there, on the other side, was Austria.  Had Cavour said what he thought, he would have responded, “That is the first stone to move.”  But he did not enter upon a discussion; he merely murmured, rubbing his hands, “We shall do something!”

To the end Cavour evoked more ready sympathy among men of the other provinces than among the Piedmontese, although these last came to repose the blind trust in him which the Duke of Wellington’s soldiers reposed in their leader—­a trust born of the conviction that he would lead to victory.  Latterly this was Victor Emmanuel’s own way of feeling towards Cavour.  Sympathy was always lacking.