glory, without ever reaching the real goal of his ambition? What
influence could he exercise in favour of his unhappy brothers in a
country where egotism monopolised the high places? What was the mass
of foreigners doing which had been thrown into Paris by choice or
misfortune? Who among them was useful to his fellow-men? The political
troubles which desolated Italy had obliged her noblest sons to fly far
from her, but in their exile their eminent faculties became forceless
and sterile. Only one Italian had made a name in Paris, Pellegrino
Rossi; but this man, whose capacities Cavour rated as extraordinary,
reached the summit of success open to him in France when he obtained a
professorship at the Sorbonne and a chair in the Academy, whereas,
in the country which he repudiated, he might have one day guided his
compatriots in the paths of the new civilisation--words which read
like an imperfect prophecy, since the unfortunate Rossi was to lose
his life later in the attempt to reform the papal government. Cavour
repeats that literature would be the only promising opening, and for
literature he feels no vocation; he has a reasoning, not an inventive
head; he does not possess a grain of imagination; in his whole life he
had never been able to construct even the smallest story to amuse a
child; at best he would be a third-class literary man, and he says
in the matter of art he can only conceive one position: the highest.
Certainly he might turn to science; to become a great mathematician,
chemist, physicist, was a way of seeking glory as good as another;
only he confessed that it had few attractions "for the Italian with
the rosy complexion and the smile of a child." Ethical science
interested him more, but this was to be pursued in retirement, not in
great cities. "No, no," he writes, "it is not in flying from one's
fatherland because it is unhappy that one can attain a glorious end."
But if he were mistaken, if a splendid future awaited him on foreign
soil, still his resolution would be the same. Evil be to him who