Cavour had scarcely returned to Piedmont when a ministerial crisis occurred through the rejection by the Senate of a far from stringent Bill for permitting civil marriage, which had passed in the Chamber of Deputies.  The situation was further complicated by the state of mind into which the king had been driven by the remonstrances of his wife and mother, both near their end, and by the answer which he received from Rome in reply to a direct appeal to settle matters amicably, the Pope having said, in effect, that he was not going to help him to legalise concubinage in his dominions.  D’Azeglio, harassed on all sides and ill through the reopening of his wound, resigned office, and advised the king to send for Cavour.  “The other one, whom you know, is diabolically active, and fit in body and soul, and then, he enjoys it so much!” he wrote to a friend, with the pathetic wonder of the artist, romancist, and grand seigneur, who had never been able to make out what there was to enjoy in politics.  Victor Emmanuel followed his advice, but he allowed Cavour to see that he hoped that the new ministry would make up the quarrel with Rome.  Cavour knew that only one path could lead to peace—­surrender.  Though anxious for office he declined to take it on these terms, and he recommended the king to call Count Balbo to his counsels; but Balbo, persuaded that a ministry only supported by the Extreme Right could not stand even for a few weeks, in his turn suggested the recall of D’Azeglio.  Here the saving good sense of the king interposed; little as he liked Cavour he recognised that he was the only man possible, and he charged him, without conditions, with the formation of a ministry.  D’Azeglio had fallen on a point on which Cavour was for and not against him; his successor desired to show that there would be no violent change of policy, and he therefore reconstructed the Cabinet as it was before, except for the change of head.  He reserved for himself the Presidency of the Council and the Ministry of Finance.  Rattazzi, who still occupied the Speaker’s chair, was willing to wait for the present for a seat in the Cabinet, especially when he heard that the king, who was at first very hostile to the Connubio, had quite expected him to take office.

So the gran ministero, as it was called, entered upon its functions:  great by reason of its chief, who infused his own life and vigour into what was before a weak administration.  Cavour was a born man of business; he hated disorder in everything—­except, indeed, dress, in which his carelessness was proverbial.  He had not the common belief that, muddle them how you may, there will always be a providence which looks after the affairs of the State and prevents the collapse that would attend a private commercial enterprise conducted on the same system.  He took in hand the financial renewal of Piedmont in the same spirit in which, when he had only just reached maturity, he volunteered to restore his father’s dilapidated