ever had; just as
ten years later the same nemesis brought him into collision with the
stern, rough genius of the north in the person of Count Bismarck.
Meanwhile the sovereigns of central and northern Europe had interviews at
Stuttgart, at Teplitz, at Warsaw. It was at Warsaw that the rulers of
Austria and Prussia met the Czar at the end of 1860,--Poland quivering as
she saw the three crowned pirates choose the capital city of their victim
for a rendezvous. Russia declined to join what would have been a coalition
against France, and the pope described the conference of Warsaw as three
sovereigns assembling to hear one of them communicate to the other two the
orders of the Emperor of the French. The French empire was at its zenith.
Thiers said that the greatest compensation to a Frenchman for being
nothing in his own country, was the sight of that country filling its
right place in the world.

The reader will remember that at Turin on his way home from the Ionian
Islands in the spring of 1859, Mr. Gladstone saw the statesman who was
destined to make Italy. Sir James Hudson, our ambassador at the court of
Piedmont, had sounded Cavour as to his disposition to receive the
returning traveller. Cavour replied, "I hope you will do all you can to
bring such a proceeding about. I set the highest value on the visit of a
statesman so distinguished and such a friend of Italy as Mr. Gladstone."
In conveying this message to Mr. Gladstone (Feb. 7, 1859), Hudson adds, "I
can only say I think your counsels may be very useful to this government,
and that I look to your coming here as a means possibly of composing
differences, which may, if not handled by some such calm unprejudiced
statesman as yourself, lead to very serious disturbances in the European
body politic." Mr. Gladstone dined at Cavour's table at the foreign
office, where, among other things, he had the satisfaction of hearing his
host speak of Hudson as _quel uomo italianissimo_. Ministers, the
president of the chamber, and other distinguished persons were present,
and Cavour was well pleased to have the chance of freely opening his
position and policy to "one of the sincerest and most important friends
that Italy had."(2)

Among Cavour's difficulties at this most critical moment was the attitude
of England. The government of Lord Derby, true to the Austrian sympathies
of his party, and the German sympathies of the court, accused Italy of
endangering the peace of Europe. "