position as an independent
sovereign would remain unaffected by such an act, which would smooth
the way to his assuming the hegemony of the Italian Confederation. The
Pope, however, let it be clearly known that he had no intention of
ceding a rood of his possessions, or of recognising the separation of
the part which had already escaped from him. Anyone acquainted with
the long strife and millennial manoeuvres by which the Church had
acquired the States called by her name, will understand the
unwillingness there was to yield them. To do Pius IX. justice, an
objection which merits more respect weighed then and always upon his
mind. He thought that he was personally debarred by the oath taken on
assuming the tiara from giving up the smallest part of the territory
he received from his predecessor. The Ultramontane party knew that
they had only to remind him of this oath to provoke a fresh assertion
of _Non possumus._ The attitude of the Pope was one reason why the
Congress was abandoned; but there was a deeper reason. A European
Congress would certainly not have approved the cession of Nice and
Savoy, and to that object the French Emperor was now turning all his
attention.

At Turin there was an ignoble cabal, supported not so much, perhaps,
by Rattazzi himself as by followers, the design of which was to
prevent Cavour from returning to power. Abroad, the Empress Eugenie,
who looked on Cavour as the Pope's worst foe, did what she could to
further the scheme, and its promoters counted much on the soreness
left in Victor Emmanuel's mind by the scene after Villafranca. That
soreness did, in fact, still exist; but when in January the Rattazzi
ministry fell, the King saw that it was his duty to recall Cavour to
his counsels, and he at once charged him to form a cabinet.

That Cavour accepted the task is the highest proof of his abnegation
as a statesman. He was on the point of getting into his carriage to
catch the train for Leri when the messenger reached the Palazzo Cavour
with the royal command to go to the castle. If he had refused office
and returned to the congenial activity of his life as a country
gentleman, his name would not be attached to the melancholy sacrifice
which Napoleon was now determined to exact from Italy. The French
envoy, Baron de Talleyrand, whose business it was to communicate the
unwelcome intelligence, arrived at Turin before the collapse of
Rattazzi; but, on finding that a ministerial crisis was i