as herself were what even in these days would be considered highly educated.  She became a Roman Catholic, a step followed by Adele after the birth of her second child, Camille, but Henriette remained true to the rigid Protestantism of Geneva.  At the christening of Camille de Cavour the Prince and Princess Borghese officiated as sponsors, the Marquis Benso holding at that time a post in the Prince’s household which he owed to the good graces enjoyed by his mother.

It is plain that of all his kindred, the charming and valiant Marquise Philippine was the one whom Camille de Cavour most fondly loved.  She was the member of his family who understood him best not only in childhood, but in manhood, and when all the others reproached him with embracing ideas contrary to his traditions and his order, he turned for comfort to his “dearest Marina,” as he called her ("Marina” being the pet-name by which children in Piedmont called their grandmothers), and begged her to defend him against the charge of undutiful conduct.  It might be true, he said, with the irony which was one day to become so familiar, that he was that dreadful thing, a liberal, but devoid of natural feeling he was not.  On the great day when the Statute was granted, he said to the light-hearted old lady, “Marina, we get on capitally, you and I; you were always a little bit of a Jacobin.”  That was not long before her strength, though not her courage, gave way under the deep sorrow of the loss of her great-grandson Auguste on the field of Goito.  She died in the midst of the political transformation she had so long waited for.

As a child Cavour was normally sweet-tempered, but subject to violent fits of passion; while he hated his lessons, he showed an early development of intelligence and judgment.  Like most precocious children he had one or two infantile love affairs.  A letter exists written when he was six, in which he upbraids a little girl named Fanchonette for basely abandoning him.  He says that he loves her still, but he has now made the acquaintance of a young lady of extraordinary charms, who has twice taken him out in the most beautiful gilt carriage.  It is amusing to note the worldly wisdom of the suitor of six who reckons on jealousy to bring back the allegiance of the fair but faithless Fanchonette.  The magnificent rival was Silvio Pellico’s friend, the Marchioness de Barolo, who, like every one else, was attracted by the clever child with his blue eyes and little round face.  Another story belonging to the same date is even more characteristic.  The Cavours went every year to Switzerland to stay with their connections, the De Sellons and the De la Rives.  On this occasion, when the travellers reached M. de la Rive’s villa at Presinge, Camille, looking terribly in earnest, and with an air of importance, made the more comical by the little red costume he was wearing, went straight to his host with the announcement that the postmaster had treated them abominably by