The metaphor of the oyster recalls another, that of Italy being an artichoke which the House of Savoy was to devour, a leaf at a time.  Whether or not a Duke of Savoy really invented this often-quoted comparison, it is certain that power was what the rulers of Piedmont cared for.  They were no more a race of scholars and art patrons than their people was a people of artists and poets.  There is a story to the effect that one Duke of Savoy could never make out what poetry was, except that it was written in half lines, which caused a great waste of paper.  The only poet born in Piedmont found the country unlivable.  Recent research among the archives at Turin revealed facts which were thought to be not creditable to certain princely persons, and a gleaning was therefore made of documents to which the historical student will no longer have access.  The step was ill advised; what can documents tell us on the subject that we do not know?  Did anyone suppose that the Savoy princes were commonly saints?  Sainthood has been the privilege of the women of the family, and they have kept it mostly to themselves.  But peccable and rough though the members of this royal house may have been, very few of them were without the governing faculty.  ’C’est bien le souverain le plus fin que j’ai connu en Europe,’ said Thiers of Victor Emmanuel, whose acquaintance he made in 1870, and in whom he found an able politician instead of the common soldier he had expected.  The remark might be extended back to all the race.  They understood the business of kings.  A word not unlike the ’Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento’ of Virgil was breathed over the cradle at Maurienne.  If it did not send forth sons to rule the world, its children were, at least, to be enthroned in the capital of the Caesars, and to make Italy one for the first time since Augustus.

From April to August 1849, the peace negotiations dragged on.  The pretensions of Austria were still exorbitant, and she resisted the demand which Piedmont, weak and reduced though she was, did not fear to make, that she should amnesty her Italian subjects who had taken part in the revolution.  Unequal to cope with the difficulties of the situation, the Delaunay ministry fell, and Massimo d’Azeglio was appointed President of the Council.  This was a good augury for Piedmont; D’Azeglio’s patriotism had received a seal in the wound which he carried away from the defence of Vicenza.  Honour was safe in his hands, whatever were the sacrifices to which he might be obliged to consent.

Some pressure having been put on Austria by France and England, she agreed in July to evacuate Alessandria, and to reduce the war indemnity from 230,000,000 francs to 75,000,000, which Piedmont undertook to pay, onerous though the charge was in her deplorable financial condition.  But the amnesty question was the last to be settled, and in this Piedmont stood alone.  France and her.  The Piedmontese special envoy at Milan, Count Pralormo, wrote to Prince Schwarzenberg