An obscure deputy put a question on the 25th of May, which gave Cavour the opportunity of expounding his views about Rome still more explicitly than in the previous autumn.  It was impossible, he said, to conceive Italian unity without Rome as capital.  Were there any other solution to the problem he would be willing to give it due consideration, but there was not.  The position of a capital was not decided by climatic or topographical reasons:  a glance at capitals of Europe was sufficient to certify the fact; it was decided by moral reasons.  Now Rome, alone out of the Italian cities, had an undisputed moral claim to primacy.  ‘As far as I am personally concerned,’ he said, ’I shall go to Rome with sorrow; not caring for art, I am sure that among the most splendid monuments of ancient and modern Rome I shall regret the sedate and unpoetic streets of my native town.’  It grieved him to think that Turin must resign her most cherished privilege, but he knew his fellow-citizens, and he knew them to be ready to make this last sacrifice to their country.  Might Italy not forget the cradle of her liberties when her seat of government was firmly established in the Eternal City!

He went on to say that he had not lost the hope that France and the Head of the Church would yield to the inexorable logic of the situation, and that the same generation which had resuscitated Italy would accomplish the still grander task of concluding a peace between the State and the Church, liberty and religion.  These were no formal words; Cavour’s whole heart was set on their realisation.  He did not doubt that the knot, if not untied, would be cut by the sword sooner or later.  He felt as sure as Mazzini felt that this would happen; but more than any man of any party he had reckoned the cost of ranging the Church with its vast potential powers for good, for order, for public morality, among the implacable enemies of the nascent kingdom.  And, therefore, his last public utterance was a cry for religious peace.

Always an immense worker, in these latter months Cavour had been possessed by a feverish activity.  ’I must make haste to finish my work,’ he said; ’I feel that this miserable body of mine is giving way beneath the mind and will which still urge it on.  Some fine day you will see me break down upon the road.’  On the 6th of June, after two or three days of so-called sudden illness, he broke down upon the road.

Fra Giacomo, faithful to his old promise, administered the sacraments to the dying minister, who told Farini ’to tell the good people of Turin that he died a Christian.’  After this his mind rambled, but always upon the themes that had so completely absorbed it:  Rome, Venice, Naples—­’no state of siege,’ was one of his broken sayings that referred to Naples.  It was his farewell protest against brute force in which he had never believed.  ‘Cleanse them, cleanse them,’ he repeated; cleanse the people of the South of their moral contagion; that, not force, was the remedy.  He was able to recognise the King, but unable to collect the ideas which he wished to express to him.