e contest would be by no means sure. To guard
against both possibilities, Cavour decided to act, and to act at once.
He said of the conjuncture in which he was placed that it was not one
of the most difficult, but the most difficult of his political life.
But he proved equal to the task, which does the more honour to his
statesmanship because his first plan failed completely. This plan was,
that the Neapolitan population should overthrow Francis II., and
proclaim Victor Emmanuel their King before Garibaldi crossed the
Straits. But the Neapolitans would not move hand or foot till
Garibaldi was among them. The fact that when Cavour was convinced
that the Bourbon dynasty at Naples was about to fall, he tried to
hasten its collapse by a few weeks or days, was made the most of by
his enemies as an example of base duplicity. At this distance of time,
it need only be said that whether his conduct of affairs was
scrupulous or unscrupulous, it deceived no one, for the Neapolitan
King and his friends were well convinced that the Filibuster of
Caprera was their less deadly foe than the Prime Minister of Piedmont.

But of all the foes of Franceschiello, to use the diminutive by which,
half in pity, half in contempt, the people of Naples remember him, the
most irrevocably fatal was himself. Two courses were open to him when,
after losing Sicily, he saw the loss of his other kingdom and of his
throne staring him in the face. One was to go forth like a man at the
head of his troops to meet the storm. There had been such a thing as
loyalty in the Kingdom of Naples; not loyalty of the highest sort, but
still the sentiment had existed. Who knows what might not have been
the effect of the presence of their young Sovereign on the broken
_moral_ of the Neapolitan soldiers? 'Sire, place yourself at the head
of the 40,000 who remain, and risk a last stake, or, at least, fall
gloriously after an honourable battle,' was the advice given him by
his minister of war, Pianell. But his stepmother or somebody
(certainly not his wife) said that the sacred life of a king ought to
be kept in cotton wool, like other curiosities. Meanwhile his uncle,
the Count of Syracuse, proposed the other course which, though not
heroic, would have been intelligible and even patriotic. This was to
absolve his subjects from their obedience, and embark on the first
available ship for foreign parts. Fitting the action to the word, the
Count himself started for Turin. Fran