ortions. Paris was indeed astonished.

Garibaldi had not the chief command of the Roman army, or he would
have done more; there was nothing to prevent the Italians from driving
Oudinot into the sea. The Triumvirate, when appealed to directly by
Garibaldi, refused their sanction, either fearing to leave the capital
exposed to the Neapolitans who were advancing, or (and this seems to
have been the real reason) still hoping that France would repudiate
Oudinot and come to terms. Garibaldi was right on this occasion, and
Mazzini was wrong. When you are at war, nothing is so ruinous as to be
afraid of damaging the enemy.

The French ministers, bombarded with reproaches by friends and foes,
and most uneasy lest their troops in Italy should be destroyed before
they could send reinforcements, did disown Oudinot's march on Rome,
and Ferdinand de Lesseps was despatched nominally 'to arrange matters
in a pacific sense,' but actually to gain time.

In a sitting in the French Assembly, a member of the opposition said
to the President of the Council: 'You are going to reinstate the
Pope!' 'No, no,' ejaculated Odilon Barrot. 'You are going to do the
same as Austria,' cried Lamoriciere. 'We should be culpable if we
did,' was the answer. Lesseps' instructions, very vague, for the rest,
were given to him in this spirit. That Lesseps acted in good faith has
been generally admitted, and was always believed by Mazzini. It was to
the interest of the French Government to choose a tool who did not
see how far he was a tool. But if Lesseps had no suspicions, if he had
not strong suspicions of the real object of his employers, then he was
already at this date a man singularly easy to deceive.

The French envoy was commissioned to treat, not with the Triumvirate,
but with the Roman Assembly: a piece of insolence which the former
would have done well to reply to by sending him about his business.
Lesseps, however, thought that he would gain by speaking in person to
Mazzini, and in order that the interview should remain a secret, he
decided to go to him alone in the dead of the night and unannounced.
Having made the needful inquiries, he proceeded to the palace of the
Consulta, the doors of which seem to have been left open all night;
there were guards, but they were asleep, and the French diplomatist
traversed the long suite of splendid apartments, opening one into the
other without corridors. At last he reached the simply-furnished room
where,