be "positively mischievous," Cavour looked upon it in
the light of the first step to far greater changes. Many other schemes
were floating in his brain for which he worked feverishly in private,
though he did not venture to support them officially. The object
nearest his heart was the union or rather reunion of Parma and
Modena with Piedmont, to which those duchies had annexed themselves
spontaneously in 1848. In order to get rid of the Duke of Modena and
Duchess of Parma with the consent of Europe, Cavour was desperately
anxious to find them--other situations. Every throne that was or could
be made vacant was reviewed in turn; Greece, Wallachia, and Moldavia,
anywhere out of Italy would do; the Duchess, not a very youthful
widow, was to marry this or that prince to obligingly facilitate
matters:--abortive projects, which seem absurd now, but Cavour was
willing to try everything to gain anything. In weaving these plans
Cavour employed the energy of which Prince Napoleon complained that he
did not show enough in the Congress, though to have shown more would
have led to a rebuff, or, perhaps, to enforced retirement. Still there
was one point which, in the Congress, as out of it, he never treated
with moderation: this was the sequestration of Lombard estates. When
Count Buol spoke of an amnesty including _nearly_ all cases, he
replied that he would not renew diplomatic relations with Vienna
while one exception remained. In an audience with the Emperor, after
Walewski had ingeniously tried to excuse Austria for exercising her
"rights" over her ex-subjects, Cavour burst out with the declaration
that if he had 150,000 men at his disposal he would make it a _casus
belli_ with Austria that very day.

Peace was signed on March 30. A supplementary sitting was held on
April 8, when the President, Count Walewski, by express order of
the Emperor, and to the astonishment of all present, proposed for
discussion the French and Austrian occupations of the Roman States
and the conduct of the king of Naples (his own favourite monarch) as
likely to provoke grave complications and to compromise the peace of
Europe. This was a victory for Cavour, as it was the direct result
of his "note," but he was afraid that the discussion of the Roman
question would be kept within the narrowest limits in consequence of
its affecting France as well as Austria. Walewski wished so to limit
it; he was embarrassed by the analogy of the French in Rome, and by