when some one mentioned Cavour's name, he
exclaimed, throwing up his hands, "Ah, that was a man in a thousand!
He had not the slightest sentiment of hate in his heart."

In the two months which Cavour spent in Paris he perceived very
clearly that Walewski and the other French ministers would have to be
reckoned more as opponents than friends in the future development of
affairs. He found, however, two men who could be trusted to continue
his work by incessantly pushing Napoleon III. in an Italian direction;
one was Prince Napoleon, the other, Dr. Conneau, a person entirely in
the Imperial confidence. Henceforth Dr. Conneau was the secret, and
for a long time quite unsuspected, intermediary between Cavour and the
Emperor. The idea of establishing this channel of communication first
occurred to Count Arese, whose own influence at the Tuileries, though
exercised with prudent reserve, was of no slight importance. This
Milanese nobleman personified, as it were all the proud hatred of
the Lombard aristocracy for an alien yoke. The truest and most
disinterested friend of Queen Hortense, Arese remained faithfully
attached to her son in good and evil fortune. He would never turn the
friendship to account for himself. When Napoleon offered to ask as a
personal favour for the removal of the sequestration on his family
property, he answered that he preferred to take his chance with the
rest. He won the lasting regard of the Empress, though she knew that
he influenced Napoleon in a sense contrary to her own political
sympathies. The visits of this high-minded gentleman and devoted
friend were as welcome at a court crowded with self-seekers and
charlatans as they were to be later in the solitude of Chislehurst.
Arese was in Paris during the Congress, having been chosen by the
king, at Cavour's urgent request, to carry his congratulations to the
Emperor on the birth of the Prince Imperial.

At the earlier sittings of the Congress, Cavour kept in the
background; his instinct as a man of the world, and that mixture of
astuteness and simplicity which he shared with many of his countrymen
(even those of no education), guided him in filling a difficult and,
in some respects, an embarrassing position. He spoke, when he did
speak, in as brief terms as could serve to express his opinion.
But this modest attitude only threw into relief his inalienable
superiority. He cast about the shadow of future greatness. The
representative of the secon