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 w