unteers, had he not himself instituted them in
1859 in the teeth of all kinds of opposition? Was it likely that he
wished to treat them ill? A few days later Garibaldi wrote a letter in
which he promised Cavour (in effect) plenary absolution if he would
proclaim a dictatorship. He would then be the first to obey. There
was no petty spite or envy in Garibaldi; his wild thrusts had been
prompted by "a general honest thought, and common good to all." He was
ready to give his rival unlimited power.

By the king's wish, Cavour and Garibaldi met and exchanged a few
courteous, if not cordial, words. Cavour ignored the scene in the
Chamber; he had already said that for him it had never happened. It
was their last meeting. The wear and tear of public life as it was
lived by Cavour must have been enormous; it meant the concentration,
not only of the mental and physical powers, but also of the nervous
and emotional faculties, on a single object. He had not the relaxation
of athletic or literary tastes, or the repose of a cheerful domestic
life. Latterly he even gave up going to the theatre in order to dose
undisturbed. A doctor warned him not to work after dinner, and to take
frequent holidays in the mountains; he neglected both rules. He was
inclined to despise rest. He used to say: "When I want a thing to be
done quickly, I always go to a busy man: the unoccupied man never
has any time." He, himself, did not know how to be idle; yet he was
painfully conscious of overwork and brain-fag. He told his friend
Castelli that he was tormented by sleeplessness, but still more by
certain ideas which assailed him at night, and which he could not get
rid of. He got up and walked about the room, but all was useless; "I
am no longer master of my head." When Parliament was open, he never
missed a sitting, and he left nothing to subordinates in the several
departments in his charge. While his mental processes remained clear
and orderly, the brain, when not governed by the will, did its tasks
as a tired slave does them; thus he was surrounded by a mass of
confused papers and documents, amongst which he sometimes had to seek
for days for the one required at the moment.

In the last half of May he was noticed to be unwontedly irritable and
impatient of contradiction. The debates bored him; on the last day
that he sat in his accustomed place, he said that, when Italy was
made, he would bring in a Bill to abolish all the chairs of rhetoric.
That e