d almost completely on imagination. 'It was,' said
Mr Petre, 'the name and known views of Pius, rather than his acts,
which aroused so much interest.' If for 'known views' be substituted
'supposed views,' the remark exactly describes the situation.

Popularity is very well, but a government cannot long subsist on the
single fact of the popularity of the sovereign. When the Roman mob
began to cry: 'Viva Pio Nono _solo_,' the fate of the experiment was
sealed. Real control slipped from the hands that nominally wielded it.
'The influence,' Mr Petre wrote to Sir George Hamilton, 'of one
individual of the lower class, Angelo Brunetti, hardly known but by
his nickname of Ciceruacchio, has for the last month kept the peace of
the city more than any power possessed by the authorities, from the
command which he exerts over the populace.' It was Ciceruacchio who
preserved order when in July 1847 the air was full of rumours of a
vast reactionary plot, which aimed at carrying off the Pope, and
putting things back as they were under Gregory. That such a plot was
ever conceived, or, at anyrate, that it received the sanction of the
high personages whose names were mentioned in connection with it, is
generally doubted now; but it was believed in by many of the
representatives of foreign Powers then in Italy. The public mind in
Rome was violently disturbed. Austria made the excitement the excuse
for occupying the town of Ferrara, where, by the accepted
interpretation of the Treaty of Vienna, she had only the right to
garrison the fortress. This aggression called forth a strong
remonstrance from the Pope's Secretary of State, Cardinal Ferretti;
and though a compromise was arrived at through the mediation of Lord
Palmerston, the feeling against Austria grew more and more exasperated
in the Roman states, and the Pope consented, not, it seemed, much
against the grain, to preparations being taken in hand with a view to
the possible eventuality of war.

At this date the Italian question was better apprehended at Vienna
than in any other part of Europe. A man of Prince Metternich's talents
does not devote a long life to statecraft without learning to
distinguish the real drift of political currents. While Lord
Palmerston still felt sure that reforms, and nothing but reforms, were
what Italy wanted, Prince Metternich saw that two real forces were at
work from the Alps to the Straits of Messina, and two only: desire for
union, hatred of Austri