Though Rattazzi’s timidity prevented Victor Emmanuel from accepting the preferred crowns, the king declared on his own account that if these people who trusted in him were attached, he would break his sword and go into exile rather than leave them to their fate.  He wrote to Napoleon that misfortune might turn to fortune, but that the apostasies of princes were irreparable.  The Peace of Zurich, signed on November 10, did nothing to relax the strain.  It merely referred the settlement of Italy to the usual Napoleonic panacea—­a Congress not intended to meet.  A Congress would have done nothing for Italy, but neither would it have given Napoleon Savoy and Nice.  But the proposal had one important result:  it brought Cavour back on the scene.  A duel was going on between him and Rattazzi.  He was accused, perhaps truly, of moving heaven and earth to upset the ministry, while Rattazzi’s friends were spreading abroad every form of abuse and calumny to keep him out of office.  When the Congress was announced, the popular demand for the appointment of Cavour as Sardinian plenipotentiary was too strong to be resisted.  Rattazzi yielded, and the king, though still remembering with bitter feelings the scene at Villafranca, sacrificed his pride to his patriotism.  Cavour did not like the idea of serving under Rattazzi, but he agreed to accept the post in order to prevent an antagonism which would have proved fatal to Italy.  Napoleon astutely uttered no word of protest.

The Congress hung fire, and Cavour remained at Leri occupied with his cows and his fields, but secretly chafing at the sight of Italy in a perilous crisis abandoned to men whom he believed incapable.  From the moment that he had been called back to the public service, his own return to the premiership could only be a question of time, and he wished that time to be short.  The fall of the ministry was inevitable, for it was unpopular on all sides, but no one had foreseen how it would fall.  La Marmora, who was the nominal president of the Council (Rattazzi having taken his old post of Home Minister), somehow discovered that a draft of Cavour’s letter of acceptance of the appointment of plenipotentiary existed in Sir James Hudson’s handwriting.  Though it was true that the British Government was most anxious that Cavour should figure in the Congress, if there was one, the fact that Sir James Hudson had written down a copy of the letter as it was composed was only an accident which happened through the intimate relations between them.  La Marmora saw it in a different light, and angrily declaring that he would not put up with foreign pressure, he sent in his resignation, which was accepted.  Thus in January 1860 Cavour became once more the helmsman of Italian destinies.  The new ministry consisted principally of himself, as he held the home and foreign offices, as well as the presidency of the Council.