As to the Duchies never for a moment did I believe in armed intervention.  Napoleon distinctly with his own lips promised our delegates, after the peace, and before he left Italy, that he would neither do it nor permit it.  And afterwards, in Paris, again and again.  He accepted the Austrian proposition under the condition simply that the Dukes were recalled by the people, not in defiance of the popular will.  He has been loyal throughout both to Austria and to Italy, and to his own original programme, which did not contemplate dispossessing sovereigns but freeing peoples.

Italy for the Italians—­and so it will be.  For Prince Napoleon, when he was in Florence he might have remained there and delighted everybody.  I know even that a person high in office felt the way towards a proposal of the kind, and that he answered in a manner considered too ‘tranchant,’ ’No, no, that would suit neither the Emperor nor England; et pour moi, je ne le voudrais pas.’  He used every opportunity at that time of advising the fusion, about which people were much less unanimous than they are now.

But calumny never dies (like me!).  Mr. Russell, Lord John’s nephew, the quasi-minister at Rome, very acute, and liberal too (by the English standard) being on his road to Rome from London last week proposed paying us a visit, and we had him here two days (in a valuable spare room!).  He told me that Napoleon had been too fin for the English Government.  He had induced them to acknowledge the Tuscan vote—­(observe that fact, dearest friends) induced them to acknowledge the Tuscan vote; and now here was his game.  He had forbidden Piedmont to accept the fusion,[66] and therefore Piedmont must refuse.  The consequence of which would be that there must be another vote in Tuscany, which would favor Prince Napoleon, and that we, having accepted the first vote, must accept the second, the Emperor throwing up his hands and crying, ‘Who would have thought it?’

We told him that he and the English Government were so far out in their conclusions, that Piedmont, instead of refusing, would accept conditionally; but he sighed, ‘hoped it might be so,’ in the way in which preposterous opinions are civilly put away.

Scarcely was he gone, when the conditional acceptance was known.

How much more I could tell you.  But one can’t write all.  The first battle in the north of Italy freed Italy potentially from north to south.  Our political life here in the centre is a proof of this.  The conduct of the Italians is admirable, but last year they could not have assumed this attitude.  They were a bound people.  And even now, if the Emperor removed his hand from Austria, we should have the foreign intervention, and no hope.

We are ready and willing to fight, observe.  The ‘Times’ may take back its words.  But to oppose the whole Austrian Empire with our unorganised, however heroic, forces, is impossible.  We might die, indeed....