to Cavour, asking him for a passport to return to Italy, and placing at the disposal of the Sardinian government ’the courage and energy which it had pleased God to give him,’ provided that government left wavering behind, and showed its unmistakable will to achieve the independence of Italy.  Cavour sent no reply, ‘because,’ he said later, ’the letter was noble and energetic, and I should have had to pay Orsini compliments which I did not deem fitting.  ’Unlike Victor Emmanuel, who in after years carried on regular negotiations with Mazzini, Cavour, while ready to make an alliance with the Radicals in the Chamber, was extremely loth to have anything to do with actual revolutionists.  His not answering Orsini’s letter certainly led up to the attempt of the 14th of January 1858.

Having quarrelled with Mazzini, and receiving no encouragement from Cavour, Orsini evolved the plan which on that day he endeavoured to put into execution.  He would have preferred to act alone, but since that was impossible, he sought and found without much difficulty two or three accomplices.  One of these, Pieri, a teacher of languages, was arrested by the police, who recognised him as an old conspirator, before he threw the bomb which he was carrying.  The other bombs were thrown just as the carriage containing the Imperial party drove up to the opera house.  A number of people in the street were killed or injured, but the Emperor and Empress escaped unhurt.  When they entered the theatre the Rutli scene of the conspirators in Guillaume Tell was being performed.  Not a breath of applause greeted them, though everyone knew what had happened.  Napoleon III. had a striking proof of how little hold he possessed on the affections of his subjects.

When at his trial Orsini was asked what he expected would happen if he had succeeded in killing the Emperor he answered:  ’We were convinced that the surest way of making a revolution in Italy was to excite one in France, and that the surest way of making a revolution in France was to kill the Emperor.’  There is a good deal of curious evidence to show that very elaborate preparations had been made for a revolution in Paris.  The French police had orders, however, to keep all this aspect of the affair out of sight.  It was to be made to appear the isolated act of a misguided Italian patriot.  ’The world possesses an Orsini legend,’ writes the late Duke of Saxe-Coburg, who was present at the event, having been invited to join the Emperor at the opera, ‘which is quite at variance with facts.’  The duke clearly thinks that the conviction of the instability of his throne which was brought home to the Emperor on this occasion, was one of the causes which decided him to try the diversion of public opinion into other channels by means of a foreign war.