It is difficult to say what were at this date Cavour’s own private sentiments about Italian unity.  Though he once confessed that as a young man he had fancied himself Prime Minister of Italy, whenever the subject was now discussed he disclaimed any belief in the feasibility of uniting all parts of the peninsula in one whole.  He even called Manin ‘a very good man, but mad about Italian unification.’  It wanted, in truth, the prescience of the seer rather than the acumen of the politician to discern the unity of Italy in 1855.  All outward facts seemed more adverse to its accomplishment than at any period since 1815.  Yet it was for Italy that Cavour always pleaded; Italy, and not Piedmont or even Lombardy and Venetia.  He invariably asserted the right of his King to uphold the cause of all the populations from the Alps to the Straits of Messina.  If he adopted the proverb ’Chi va piano va sano,’ he kept in view the end of it, ’Chi va sano va lontano.’  In short, if he did not believe in Italian unity, he acted in the same way as he would have acted had he believed in it.

It is evident that one thing he could not do.  Whatever was in his thoughts, unless he was prepared to retire into private life then and there, he could not proclaim from the house-tops that he espoused the artichoke theory attributed to Victor Amadeus.  There were only too many old diplomatists as it was, who sought to cripple Cavour’s resources by reviving that story.  The time was not come when, without manifest damage to the cause, he could plead guilty to the charge of preparing an Italian crown for his Sovereign.  ‘The rule in politics,’ Cavour once observed, ’is to be as moderate in language as you are resolute in act.’

At the end of 1855, Victor Emmanuel, with Cavour and Massimo d’Azeglio, paid a visit to the French and English Courts.  He was received with more marked cordiality at the English Court than at the French.  No Prince Charming, indeed, but the ideal of a bluff and burly Longobard chief, he managed to win the good graces of his entertainers, even if they thought him a trifle barbaric.  The Duchess of Sutherland declared that of all the knights of St George whom she had ever seen, he was the only one who would have had the best of it in the fight with the dragon.  The Queen rose at four o’clock in the morning to take leave of him.  Cavour was so much struck by the interest which Her Majesty evinced in the efforts of Piedmont for constitutional freedom, that he did not hesitate to call her the best friend his country possessed in England.

It is not generally known, but it is quite true, that Victor Emmanuel wished to contract a matrimonial alliance with the English royal family.  He did not take Cavour into his confidence, but a high English personage was sounded on the matter, a hint being given to him to say nothing about it to the Count.  The lady who might have become Queen of Italy was the Princess Mary of Cambridge.  The negotiations were broken off because the young Princess would not hear of any marriage which would have required her living out of England.