following deathbed communication from one of the Order who was his own confessor:  ’Deeply sensible of your many favours, I can only show my gratitude by a final piece of advice, but of such importance that perhaps it may suffice to discharge my debt.  Never have a Jesuit for confessor.  Do not ask me the grounds of this advice, I should not be at liberty to tell them to you.’  The lesson was forgotten now.  Charles Albert was not content to wear a hair-shirt himself; he would have liked to see all his subjects furnished with the same garment.  The result was, that Piedmont was not a comfortable place for Liberals to live in, nor a lively place for anyone.  Yet there is hardly anything more certain than that all this time the King was constantly dreaming of turning the Austrians out of Italy.  His government kept its attention fixed on two points:  the improvement of the army, and the accumulation of a reserve fund to be available in case of war.  Drill and thrift, which made the German Empire out of Prussia, if they did not lead straight to equally splendid results south of the Alps, were still what rendered it possible for Piedmont to defy Austria when the time came.  In 1840, Charles Albert wrote to his Minister of War:  ’It is a fine thing to win twenty battles; as for me, I should be content to win ten on behalf of a cause I know of, and to fall in the tenth—­then, indeed, I would die blessing the Lord.’  A year or two later, he unearthed and reassumed the ancient motto of the House of Savoy:  ‘J’attends mon astre.’  Nevertheless, to the outward world his intentions remained enigmatical, and it was therefore with extreme surprise that Massimo d’Azeglio (who, on his return from the Roman states, asked permission to inform the King of the impressions made on him by his travels) received the injunction to tell his Liberal friends ’that when the occasion presented itself, his life, the life of his sons, his treasure, and his army would all be spent for the Italian cause.’

The fifteen years’ pontificate of Gregory XVI. ended on the 1st June of 1846.  In spite of the care taken by those around him to keep the aged pontiff in a fool’s paradise with regard to the real state of his dominions, a copy of The Late Events in Romagna fell into his hands, and considerably disturbed his peace of mind.  He sent two prelates to look into the condition of the congested provinces, and their tour, though it resulted in nothing else, called forth new protests and supplications from the inhabitants, of which the most noteworthy was an address written by Count Aurelio Saffi, who was destined to pass many honourable years of exile in England.  This address attacked the root of the evil in a passage which exposed the unbearable vexations of a government based on espionage.  The acknowledged power of an irresponsible police was backed by the secret force of an army of private spies and informers.  The sentiment of legality was being stamped out of the public conscience, and with it religion and morality.  ’Bishops have been heard to preach civil war—­a crusade against the Liberals; priests seem to mix themselves in wretched party strife, egging on the mob to vent its worst passions.  There is not a Catholic country in which the really Christian priest is so rarely found as in the States of the Church.’