upright and impassible. Cavour walked in the company of journalists,
and all those who had opposed him a few weeks before were there too,
with Valerio at their head. They sang their strophe of Mameli's hymn,
"Fratelli d'Italia," very badly. Cavour whispered to his neighbour,
"We are so many dogs!"

That neighbour, a Milanese named Giuseppe Torelli, has left an
interesting description of Cavour's appearance as it was then. He was
fresh-coloured, and his blue eyes had not yet lost their brightness,
but they were so changeful in expression that it was difficult to fix
their distinctive quality. Though rather stout he was not ungainly, as
he tended to become later. He stooped a little, and two narrow lines
were visible on either side of a mouth, cold and uneffusive; but these
lines, by their trembling or contraction, showed the play of inward
emotion which the rest of the face concealed. In after days people
used to watch them in order to guess his state of mind. It was his
large and solid forehead that chiefly gave the idea of power which
every one who saw him carried away, despite of the want of dignity in
his person and of strongly-marked features in his face. His manners
were simple, but distinguished by an unmistakably aristocratic ease
and courtesy. He spoke generally low and without emphasis, and always
appeared to pay great attention to what was said to him, even by the
least important person.

Nothing, on the face of it, could seem more extraordinary than the
exclusion of Cavour from office in the momentous year of 1848. But
he had no popular party at his back whose cry could overrule the
disinclination which the king certainly felt towards making him his
Minister. Moreover, his abilities, though now generally recognised,
contributed to keeping him in the background: it was felt