Count Buol, who was formerly ambassador at Turin.  In old days, before 1848, he had played whist with him.  “I know M. de Cavour,” he said; “I am afraid he will give us de fil a retordre.”  Cavour carefully avoided, however, unnecessary friction.  Loyal to both the allies, he managed to steer between their not always consonant aims while preserving his own independence, by taking what seemed, on the whole, the most liberal side in debated questions.  With Count Buol he maintained courteous if formal relations, and he soon made a thorough conquest of Count Orloff, who did not begin by being prepossessed in favour of the minister who alone had caused the Sardinian attack on Russia, but who ended on far better terms with him than with his Austrian colleague, of whom he said to Cavour in a voice meant to be heard, “Count Buol talks exactly as if Austria had taken Sebastopol!”

With regard to Cavour’s real business, the fate of Italy, he was obliged to proceed with a restraint which few men would have had the self-control to observe.  This was what had been predicted; how, in fact, putting aside Austria, could an Italian patriot speak freely of nationality, of alien dominion, of the rights of peoples, in an assembly of old diplomatists, conservative by the nature of their profession and religiously in awe of treaties by the responsibility of their office?  It was only just before the signature of peace that Cavour cautiously launched his bolt in the shape of a note on the situation of affairs in Italy, addressed to the English and French plenipotentiaries.  It was conceived on the same lines as the letter to Walewski:  the Austrian occupation of the Roman Legations was again made a sort of test question, to which particular weight was attached.  One reason why Cavour dwelt so much on this point was that the occupation could be assailed on legal grounds, leaving nationality alone.  As, moreover, it was admitted that the Papal Government would fall in Romagna were the Austrians withdrawn, the principle of the destruction of the temporal power of the Pope would be granted from the moment that their departure was declared expedient.  While D’Azeglio thought that the separation of Romagna from the States of the Church would be “positively mischievous,” Cavour looked upon it in the light of the first step to far greater changes.  Many other schemes were floating in his brain for which he worked feverishly in private, though he did not venture to support them officially.  The object nearest his heart was the union or rather reunion of Parma and Modena with Piedmont, to which those duchies had annexed themselves spontaneously in 1848.  In order to get rid of the Duke of Modena and Duchess of Parma with the consent of Europe, Cavour was desperately anxious to find them—­other situations.  Every throne that was or could be made vacant was reviewed in turn; Greece, Wallachia, and Moldavia, anywhere out of Italy would do; the Duchess, not a very youthful widow,