the fear of saying something unflattering of the Pope. But Napoleon
would not have risked the discussion at all had he shared his
minister's sensitiveness. The truth was, that he was always looking
out for an excuse which would serve with the clerical party in
France for recalling his troops from Rome. He was thinking then of
withdrawing them so as to oblige Austria to withdraw her forces from
the Legations. It does not appear that Cavour guessed this. In his own
speech he glided over the presence of the French, in Rome as lightly
as he could, merely saying that his Government "desired" the complete
evacuation of the Roman States; but his reserve was not imitated by
Lord Clarendon, nor could Napoleon have expected that it would
be. When some one asked Lord Palmerston for a definition of the
difference between "occupation" and "business," he answered on the
spur of the moment--"There is a French occupation of Rome, but they
have no business there;" and this witticism correctly represented
English opinion on the subject. It was natural, therefore, that the
British plenipotentiary should make no distinction between the French
in Rome and the Austrians at Bologna: he denounced both occupations as
equally to be condemned and equally calculated to disturb the
balance of power, but at the root of the matter was the abominable
misgovernment, which made it impossible to leave the Pope to his
subjects without fear of revolution. The papal administration was the
opprobrium of Europe. As to the king of Naples, if he did not soon
mend his ways and listen to the advice of the Powers, it would become
their duty to enforce it by arguments of a kind which he could not
refuse to obey. An extraordinary sensation was created by the speech
of which this is a bald summary; it might have been spoken, Cavour
said, "by an Italian radical," and the vehemence with which it was
delivered doubled its effect. Lord Clarendon, who, at the beginning of
the Congress, was nervous as to what Cavour might do, had been worked
up to such a pitch of indignation by the private conversations of his
outwardly discreet colleague that he himself threw diplomatic reserve
to the winds. Walewski, dreadfully uncomfortable about the Pope, tried
to bring the discussion back within politer bounds; Buol was stiffly
indignant; Orloff, indifferent about the Pope, was on tenter-hooks as
to Russia's friend, the king of Naples; the Prussian plenipotentiary
said that he had no