Then, so far as we can judge of the settlement, it seems one that is likely to give more offence and disappointment than satisfaction to the bulk of the Italian people, and to imagine that affairs will relapse or resolve themselves into a peaceable and quiescent state is a mere delusion. What passed between the two Emperors we may perhaps never know, though the effects of their interview may one day become dangerously apparent; but it is not unreasonable to conjecture that Napoleon exerted all his arts and blandishments to make a friend of Francis Joseph, and to persuade him that a cordial alliance with France would be more advantageous to him than one with England, and he might with every appearance and much of the reality of truth tell him that England had done nothing for him; that neither the Government nor the nation had any sympathies with Austria, whom, so far from assisting, they had gladly seen defeated in Italy; and that the forbearance of the Emperor in leaving Austria in possession of any part of Italy would be unpalateable to Palmerston and John Russell, and generally unpopular. One cannot but suspect that an alliance was at least projected, if not formed, between the three great despotic Powers, France, Austria, and Russia, for the purpose of domineering over Europe, and dealing with the several States according to their pleasure, or the pleasure of France, and with the ultimate object of attacking, weakening, and humbling England. [Sidenote: THE CONFERENCE OF THE EMPERORS.] Of all the provisions of this Treaty that which regards the sovereignty of the Pope is the most curious and seems the most difficult to carry out; it is indicative of the necessity under which the Emperor thinks he is placed of disarming the hostility and consulting the prejudices of the Catholic party and the Church in France. Whether the Pope will accept the temporal office assigned to him may be doubted, but it can hardly be doubted that his supremacy will not be willingly accepted and acknowledged by the Italians generally, to whom the Papal rule is already odious.[3] One cannot but feel glad at the deep mortification and disappointment which will overtake the Republicans and Socialists, the Mazzinis, Garibaldis, Kossuths, _et hoc genus omne_, at a pacification so ruinous to all their hopes and designs. Clarendon told me he believed the account in the 'Times' of the compact between the Emperor and Kossuth, and nothing is more likely than that at the beginning of the contest he employed Kossuth in the way stated, and gave him all sorts of promises, and when he found he could do everything _sine tali auxilio_, and that he had a stronger interest in making friends with Austria, he threw Kossuth over without scruple or hesitation. This is exactly the course he would be likely to follow.[4]