m when they
were young and fair. The first print on the retina of the mental
vision was so strong that no later impression can change or efface it.
This hallucination is not confined to the marital relationship, and
Victor Emmanuel never left off seeing Napoleon in one sole light: as
the friend of Solferino. It may be that he perceived what the Italians
did not perceive: that the obligation was owed to Napoleon alone,
while all France had a part in the subsequent injuries. At any rate
the idea of refusing the Emperor's appeal was repugnant in the extreme
to the Italian King, who personally would have strained any point
rather than give that refusal.

The King, however, and General Menabrea, who was finally admitted into
the conspiracy, could not be blind to the fact that an unpopular war
might create so great an agitation in the country that the dynasty
itself would be in danger. A war for France while the French were in
Rome would have raised one storm of indignation from Palermo to Turin.
So their ultimatum was this: Rome capital of Italy, or no alliance.

There remained Austria, but if Napoleon ever hoped to conclude a
separate treaty with her, he was to discover his mistake. From the
moment that Austria resigned the Iron Crown, the symbol of her Italian
power, she acted towards Italy with a loyalty that has few parallels
in history. And she, too, replied to Napoleon: Rome capital of Italy,
or no alliance.

The Vatican has never forgiven this to Austria. At the present hour,
while republican France with her open antagonism to all religion, is
the favoured daughter of the Church, Austria, the only country in
Europe except Spain where the Roman Catholic cultus retains all its
original pomp and almost all its mediaeval privileges, meets from the
Vatican a studied plan of opposition, the object of which can only be
to bring her Government to a deadlock. From France the Pope still
hopes for aid in the recovery of his temporalities; from Austria he
knows that he will never receive it. So much have politics and so
little has religion to do now, as in all ages, with the motives that
govern the Holy See.

Ahi, Costantin, di quanto mal fu matre
Non la tua conversion, ma quella dote
Che da te prese il primo ricco patre!

The years 1868 and 1869 passed uneventfully for Italy. In the former
year Prince Humbert married his cousin Margherita of Savoy. He was
previously engaged to the Archduchess Matilda, the only dau