man. Man was free at last--freer than
his would-be liberators had ever dreamed of making him--and he used his
freedom like a beast. For the multitude had risen--that multitude which
no man could number, which even the demagogues who ranted in its name
had never seriously reckoned with--that dim, grovelling
indistinguishable mass on which the whole social structure rested. It
was as though the very soil moved, rising in mountains or yawning in
chasms about the feet of those who had so long securely battened on it.
The earth shook, the sun and moon were darkened, and the people, the
terrible unknown people, had put in the sickle to the harvest.

Italy roused herself at last. The emissaries of the new France were
swarming across the Alps, pervading the peninsula as the Jesuits had
once pervaded Europe; and in the mind of a young general of the
republican army visions of Italian conquest were already forming. In
Pianura the revolutionary agents found a strong republican party headed
by Gamba and his friends, and a government weakened by debt and
dissensions. The air was thick with intrigue. The little army could no
longer be counted on, and a prolonged bread-riot had driven Trescorre
out of the ministry and compelled the Duke to appoint Andreoni in his
place. Behind Andreoni stood Gamba and the radicals. There could be no
doubt which way the fortunes of the duchy tended. The Duke's would-be
protectors, Austria and the Holy See, were too busy organising the hasty
coalition of the powers to come to his aid, had he cared to call on
them. But to do so would have been but another way of annihilation. To
preserve the individuality of his state, or to merge it in the vision of
a United Italy, seemed to him the only alternatives worth fighting for.
The former was a futile dream, the latter seemed for a brief moment
possible. Piedmont, ever loyal to the monarchical principle, was calling
on her sister states to arm themselves against the French invasion. But
the response was reluctant and uncertain. Private ambitions and petty
jealousies hampered every attempt at union. Austria, the Bourbons and
the Holy See held the Italian principalities in a network of conflicting
interests and obligations that rendered free action impossible. Sadly
Victor Amadeus armed himself alone against the enemy.

Under such conditions Odo could do little to direct the course of
events. They had passed into more powerful hands than his. But he could
at lea