or possibly with a vague hope of finding an
escape from his false position in a soldier's death, he joined the Duc
d'Angouleme's expedition against the Spanish Constitutionalists. His
extraordinary daring in the assault of the Trocadero caused him to be
the hero of the hour when he returned with the army to Paris; but the
King of Sardinia still refused to receive him with favour--a
sufficiently icy favour when it was granted--until he signed an
engagement, which remained secret, to preserve intact during his reign
the laws and principles of government which he found in force at his
accession. If there had been an Order of the Millstone, Charles Felix
would doubtless have conferred it upon his dutiful nephew; failing
that, he presented to him for signature this wonderful document, the
invention of which he owed to Prince Metternich. At the Congress of
Verona in 1822, Charles Albert's claims to the succession were
recognised, thanks chiefly to the Duke of Wellington, who represented
England in place of Lord Londonderry (Castlereagh), that statesman
having committed suicide just as he was starting for Verona. Prince
Metternich then proposed that the Prince of Carignano should be called
upon to enter into an agreement identical with the compact he was
brought to sign a couple of years later. In communicating the proposal
to Canning, the Duke of Wellington wrote that he had demonstrated to
Prince Metternich 'the fatality of such an arrangement,' but that he
did not think that he had made the slightest impression on him. So the
event proved; baffled for the moment, the Prince managed to put his
plan in execution through a surer channel.

With the accession of Charles Albert appears upon the political scene
a great actor in the Liberation of Italy, Giuseppe Mazzini. Young and
unknown, except for a vague reputation for restlessness and for talent
which caused the government of Charles Felix to imprison him for six
or seven months at Savona, Mazzini proposed to the new King the terms
on which he might keep his throne, as calmly as Metternich had
proposed to him the terms on which he might ascend it. The contrast is
striking; on the one side the statesman, who still commanded the armed
force of three-fourths of Europe, doing battle for the holy alliance
of autocrats, for the international law of repression, for all the
traditions of the old diplomacy; on the other, the young student with
little money and few friends, already an