stronger influence, that of the father's strain, predominated to the
exclusion of all others. Though all classes in Piedmont till within
the last fifty years spoke French when they did not speak dialect,
the intellectual sway of France was probably nowhere in Italy felt so
little as in Piedmont. The proximity of the two countries tended not
for it, but against it. They had been often at war; all the memories
of the Piedmontese people, the heroic exploit of Pietro Micca, the
royal legend of the Superga, turned on resistance to the powerful
neighbour. A long line of territorial nobles like the Bensos
transmits, if nothing else, at least a strong sentiment for the
birthland. In Cavour this sentiment was, indeed, to widen even in
boyhood, but it widened into Italian patriotism, not into sterile
cosmopolitanism.

In one respect Cavour was brought up according to the strictest of
old Piedmontese conventions. No one forgot that he was a younger
son. Gustave, the elder brother, received a classical education, and
acquired a strong taste for metaphysics. He became a thinker rather
than a man of action, and was one of the first and staunchest friends
of the philosopher-theologian Rosmini, whose attempts to reconcile
religion and philosophy led him into a bitter struggle with Rome. For
Camille another sort of life was planned. It was decided that he must
"do something," and at the age of ten he was sent to the Military
Academy at Turin. He did not like it, but it was better for him than
if he had been kept at home. Mathematics were well taught at the
Academy, and in this branch he soon outstripped all his schoolfellows.
He himself always spoke of his mathematical studies as having been of
great service in forming the habit of precise thought; from the study
of triangles, he said, he went on to the study of men and things. On
the other hand the boys were taught little Latin and less Greek, and