was to marry this or that prince to obligingly facilitate matters:—­abortive projects, which seem absurd now, but Cavour was willing to try everything to gain anything.  In weaving these plans Cavour employed the energy of which Prince Napoleon complained that he did not show enough in the Congress, though to have shown more would have led to a rebuff, or, perhaps, to enforced retirement.  Still there was one point which, in the Congress, as out of it, he never treated with moderation:  this was the sequestration of Lombard estates.  When Count Buol spoke of an amnesty including nearly all cases, he replied that he would not renew diplomatic relations with Vienna while one exception remained.  In an audience with the Emperor, after Walewski had ingeniously tried to excuse Austria for exercising her “rights” over her ex-subjects, Cavour burst out with the declaration that if he had 150,000 men at his disposal he would make it a casus belli with Austria that very day.

Peace was signed on March 30.  A supplementary sitting was held on April 8, when the President, Count Walewski, by express order of the Emperor, and to the astonishment of all present, proposed for discussion the French and Austrian occupations of the Roman States and the conduct of the king of Naples (his own favourite monarch) as likely to provoke grave complications and to compromise the peace of Europe.  This was a victory for Cavour, as it was the direct result of his “note,” but he was afraid that the discussion of the Roman question would be kept within the narrowest limits in consequence of its affecting France as well as Austria.  Walewski wished so to limit it; he was embarrassed by the analogy of the French in Rome, and by the fear of saying something unflattering of the Pope.  But Napoleon would not have risked the discussion at all had he shared his minister’s sensitiveness.  The truth was, that he was always looking out for an excuse which would serve with the clerical party in France for recalling his troops from Rome.  He was thinking then of withdrawing them so as to oblige Austria to withdraw her forces from the Legations.  It does not appear that Cavour guessed this.  In his own speech he glided over the presence of the French, in Rome as lightly as he could, merely saying that his Government “desired” the complete evacuation of the Roman States; but his reserve was not imitated by Lord Clarendon, nor could Napoleon have expected that it would be.  When some one asked Lord Palmerston for a definition of the difference between “occupation” and “business,” he answered on the spur of the moment—­“There is a French occupation of Rome, but they have no business there;” and this witticism correctly represented English opinion on the subject.  It was natural, therefore, that the British plenipotentiary should make no distinction between the French in Rome and the Austrians at Bologna:  he denounced both occupations as equally to be condemned and equally calculated to disturb the balance of power,