necessity of granting a constitution, and that at once. Events never
moved so fast as in the first two months of 1848. The throne of Louis
Philippe was tottering, and, with the exception of the Duke of Modena,
the princelings of Italy snatched the plank of safety of a statute
with the alacrity of drowning men. In this crisis Charles Albert
thought of abdication. Besides the known causes of his hesitancy,
there was one then unknown: the formal engagement, invented by
Metternich and forced upon him by his uncle Charles Felix, to govern
the country as he found it governed. He called the members of the
royal family together and informed them that if there must be a
constitution there must, but the decree which bestowed it would be
signed by his son. The queen and the Duchess of Savoy, who were both
extremely afraid of him, sat in silence; the handsome Duke of Genoa
tried to prove that constitutions were not such dreadful things;
Victor Emmanuel opposed his intention of abdicating in resolute terms.
Then he summoned a high ecclesiastic, who succeeded in convincing him
that it would be a greater sin to abandon his people in their need
than to break a promise he could no longer maintain. After mortifying
the flesh with fasts and vigils, he yielded, and the famous decree
bore the signature "C. Alberto" after all,--not written indeed in the
king's usually beautiful character, but betraying rather a trembling
hand, which nevertheless registered a great because a permanent
fact. This was not the prelude to perjury and expulsion. Around the
Sardinian statute were united the scattered limbs of Italy, and after
fifty years Charles Albert's grandson commemorated its promulgation at
the Capitol.

Not a man in the crowd at Turin dared to anticipate such a result:
yet their joy was frantic. Fifty thousand people, arranged in guilds,
defiled before the king, who sat like a statue on his bay horse,