“The States of the Holy See,” he insisted, “never knew prosperity, except under the rule of Napoleon I., when they formed part of the French empire and the kingdom of Italy. Later, the Emperor Napoleon III., _with that precision and firmness of view by which he is characterized_, understood and clearly pointed out in his letter to Colonel Ney the solution of the problem: _Secularization and the Code Napoleon_; but it is evident that the Court of Rome will struggle to the last moment, and by every possible means, against the realization of this twofold combination. It is easily understood that it may appear to accept civil and even political reforms, taking care always to render them illusory. But it knows too well that secularization and the code Napoleon, once introduced into the edifice of the temporal power, would undermine it and cause it to fall, simply by removing its principal supports—clerical privileges and canon law. Clerical organization opposes insurmountable impediments to all kinds of innovations.” Cavour urged, in conclusion, that “the legations” must be separated politically, and a viceroy set over those provinces. Walewski and Clarendon supported these views, but cautiously using the enigmatic language of diplomacy. The Plenipotentiaries of the other Powers were silent, or refused to give an opinion, on the ground that they had no instructions. M. de Mauteuffel alone, the Prussian representative, sternly observed that such recriminations as M. de Cavour had brought forward were very like an appeal to the revolutionary movements in Italy. Prussia did not, at that time, foresee what advantage it was destined to reap from the alliance of the Italian revolution with Napoleon III. France, however, had reason to dread lest the chief of her choice should return to the dark practices of his youth. Her too well-founded apprehensions were confirmed and aggravated when it came to the public ear, through the newspapers of the time, that the Emperor had held a too intimate interview with M. de Cavour at the waters of Plombieres. All this, notwithstanding an alliance of France with Piedmont, for the destruction of the Pope’s temporal sovereignty, appeared as yet to be so completely out of the question, that the French ambassador at Rome refuted publicly the calumnies which M. de Cavour had so selfishly promulgated. Count de Rayneval had been a long time at Rome, first as Secretary of the Embassy of King Louis Philippe, and afterwards as Plenipotentiary of the Republic, before he was appointed to represent the Emperor Napoleon. None could be better qualified to give a luminous report of the state of matters at Rome. The revolutionary press, however, never noticed it, and the government refused to publish it in the _Moniteur_, preferring the wretched pamphlet of M. About on the _Roman Question_. The French, who wished to be well informed, sought the words of M. de Rayneval’s report in the columns of the London _Daily News_: