t know fear, that
it was looked on as an ordinary fact. The Austrian origin of the
Duchess of Savoy formed a peg on which to hang unfriendly theories. It
is impossible not to compassionate the poor young wife who now found
herself Queen of a people which hated her race, after having lived
since her marriage the most dreary of lives at the dismallest court in
Europe. At first, as a bride, she seemed to have a desire to break
through the frozen etiquette which surrounded her; it is told how she
once begged and prayed her husband to take her for a walk under the
Porticoes of Turin, which she had looked at only from the outside. The
young couple enjoyed their airing, but when it reached Charles
Albert's ears, he ordered his son to be immediately placed under
military arrest. The chilling formalism which invaded even the private
life of these royal personages, shutting the door to 'good
comradeship' even between husband and wife, may have had much to do
with driving Victor Emmanuel from the side of the Princess, whom,
nevertheless, he loved and venerated, to unworthy pleasures, the habit
of indulgence in which is far easier to contract than to cure.

[Illustration: VICTOR IMMANUEL]

The King's address at this time was not conciliatory, and, indeed, it
never lost a bluntness which later harmonised well enough with the
reputation he gained for soldierly integrity, but which then passed
for aristocratic haughtiness. His personal friends were said to belong
to the aristocratic or even the reactionary party. In the perplexities
which encompassed him, he could not reckon on the encouragement of any
consensus of good opinion or confidence. He was simply an unknown man,
against whom there was a good deal of prejudice.

Radetsky did not refuse to treat with Charles Albert, as has been
sometimes said, but the intolerably onerous terms first proposed by
him showed that he wished to force the abdication which Charles Albert
had always contemplated in the event of new reverses of fortune.
Radetsky was favourably disposed to the young Duke of Savoy, as far as
his personal feeling was concerned, a fact which was made out in
certain quarters to be almost a crime to be marked to the account of
Victor Emmanuel. The Field-Marshal did not forget that he was the
son-in-law of the Austrian Archduke Ranieri; it is probable, if not
proved, that he expected to find him pliable; but Radetsky, besides
being a politician of the purest blood-and-iron