sinuating. He was richly endowed with all those secondary gifts
which often carry a man along faster, though less far, than the
highest endowments. If he had not power, he had elasticity; if not
judgment, cleverness. He always drifted, which made him always appear
the politician up to date. His name was then associated with one
catastrophe; before he died it was to be linked with two others,
Aspromonte and Mentana; but such was his ability as a leader that he
retained a compact following to the last.

Cavour rarely made a man's antecedents a reason for not turning him to
account; but there was one point on which he required to be reassured
before seeking an understanding with Rattazzi--this was whether his
fidelity to the monarchy could be entirely depended on. Cavour's old
friend and fellow worker of the _Risorgimento_, M.A. Castelli, who was
acquainted with the leader of the Left, opportunely bore witness to
Rattazzi's genuine loyalty, and Cavour hesitated no longer to come to
an agreement which every day proved to be more imperative. After
the _Coup d'etat_, the Extreme Right, led by the Count de Revel
and General Menabrea, adopted the tactics of professing to believe
untenable the position of a free State wedged in between the old
despotism of Austria and the new one of France. The argument was
ingenious and was likely to make converts. It was urgently necessary
to form a new political combination which should reduce this party to
impotence.

Cavour's compact with Rattazzi was concluded in the first month of
1852, but at first it was kept a profound secret. It was divulged, as
it were, accidentally in the course of a debate on a Bill which was
intended to moderate the attacks of the press on foreign sovereigns.
This was the only form of restriction which Cavour, then and
afterwards, was willing to countenance. He held that the excuse for
umbrage given to foreign rulers by personal invective published in
the newspapers was a danger to the State which no government ought to
tolerate. The Extreme Right and Left were immediately up in arms, the
first declaring that the Bill did not go far enough, and the second
that it went too far. Both affected to consider it the first step to
more stringent anti-liberal measures--invoked by one side and abhorred
by the other. It was then that Rattazzi made the announcement that
although he did not mean to vote for this particular Bill, he intended
to support the Ministry through th