ke a flier in both.

When I saw what a big proposition the Unification of Italy was, I knew
that there was room for the development of some mighty interesting
characters before they got through with the business. So I plunged into
the Life of Cavour, and I've never regretted it.

Talk about problems! That hero of yours in your last book--I know you
don't believe in heroes,--at any rate, the leading man--was an innocent
child walking with his nurse along Easy Street, when compared with
Cavour. Cavour had fifty problems at the same time, and all of them were
insoluble to every one except himself.

His project, as I have just told you, was the unification of Italy. But
he hadn't any regulated monopoly in the business. A whole bunch of
unifiers were ahead of him; each one of them was trying to unify Italy
in his own way. They were all working at cross-purposes.

Now Cavour didn't try, as you might have expected, to reconcile these
people. He saw that it couldn't be done. He didn't mind their hating one
another; when they got too peaceable he would make an occasion for them
to hate him. He kept them all irreconcilably at work, till, in spite of
themselves, they got to working together. And when they began to do
that, Cavour would encourage them in it. As long as they were all
working for Italy he didn't care what they thought of each other or of
him. He had his eye on the main chance--for Italy.

I notice that in your novel, when your man got into trouble he threw up
the sponge. That rather turned me against him and I wished I hadn't
wasted so much time on his affairs. That wasn't the way with Thayer's
hero. One of the largest deals Cavour ever made was with Napoleon III,
who at that time had the reputation of being the biggest promoter of
free institutions in Europe. He was a regular wizard in diplomacy.
Whatever he said went. You see they hadn't realized then that he was
doing business on borrowed capital.

Well, Napoleon agreed to underwrite, for Cavour, the whole project of
Italian Unity. Everybody thought it was going through all right, when
suddenly Napoleon, from a place called Villafranca, wired that the deal
was off.

That floored Cavour. He was down and out. He couldn't realize ten cents
on the dollar on his securities. If he had been like your man, Thayer
would have had to bring his book to an end with that chapter. He would
have left the reader plunged in gloom.

Cavour was mad for awhile and went up to