the
yoke of Bourbons and the Vatican. The third act, most romantic, most
picturesque of all, an incomparable union of heroism with policy at double
play with all the shifts of circumstance, opened a few weeks later.

The great unsolved problem was the pope. The French ambassador at the
Vatican in those days chanced to have had diplomatic experience in Turkey.
He wrote to his government in Paris that the pope and his cardinals
reminded him of nothing so much as the sultan and his ulemas--the same
vacillation, the same shifty helplessness, the same stubborn
impenetrability. The Cross seemed in truth as grave a danger in one
quarter of Europe as was the Crescent in another, and the pope was now to
undergo the same course of territorial partition as had befallen the head
of a rival faith. For ten years the priests had been maintained in their
evilly abused authority by twenty thousand French bayonets--the bayonets of
the empire that the cardinals with undisguised ingratitude distrusted and
hated.(5) The Emperor was eager to withdraw his force, if only he were
sure that no catastrophe would result to outrage the catholic world and
bring down his own throne.

Unluckily for this design, Garibaldi interposed. One night in May (1860),
soon after the annexation to Piedmont of the four central states, the hero
whom an admirer described as "a summary of the lives of Plutarch," sailed
forth from Genoa for the deliverance of the Sicilian insurgents. In the
eyes of Garibaldi and his Thousand, Sicily and Naples marked the path that
led to Rome. The share of Cavour as accomplice in the adventure is still
obscure. Whether he even really desired the acquisition of the Neapolitan
kingdom, or would have preferred, as indeed he attempted, a federation
between a northern kingdom and a southern, is not established. How far he
had made certain of the abstention of Louis Napoleon, how far he had
realised the weakness of Austria, we do not authentically know. He was at
least alive to all the risks to which Garibaldi's enterprise must
instantly expose him in every quarter of the horizon--from Austria, deeming
her hold upon Venetia at stake; from the French Emperor, with hostile
clericals in France to face; from the whole army of catholics all over the
world; and not least from triumphant Mazzinians, his personal foes, in
whose inspirations he had no faith, whose success might easily roll him
and his policy into mire and ruin. Now as always with co