They had already spoken in 1848; but then they had been silenced, because Radetzky had been a good general, and Charles Albert a bad one. But Victor Emmanuel was a greater man than Charles Albert, and he had Cavour to guide him. _Italia fara da se_—Italy will work out her own destiny—had been Charles Albert’s motto. Victor Emmanuel and Cavour played a more subtle game, and looked out for allies; and in Napoleon III. they found an ally who was quite willing to help them; a sympathetic man who had once been involved in the Carbonari movement; a sensitive man whom the head of the House of Habsburg had snubbed as a _parvenu_ by proposing to address him as “Sir” instead of “Brother.” So Napoleon’s sympathies were worked upon, and the wires were pulled. It is said that the beautiful Countess Castiglioni helped to pull them, adding the influence of her charms to that of her arguments; and the statement is probable enough, for the Emperor of the French was susceptible. At any rate, he presently asked Cavour the point-blank question: “What can one do for Italy?” and a little later, in July, 1858, he had a quiet talk with Cavour at the Baths of Plombières, and arranged what should be done, and what should be his own share of the plunder. Francis Joseph may have guessed what was coming when he read the reports of Victor Emmanuel’s speech at the opening of his Parliament, in January, 1859, containing the pregnant declaration that, “while respecting treaties, we cannot disregard the cry of grief which rises to us from so many parts of Italy.” His guesses must have become certainties when, at the New Year’s reception of the _corps diplomatique_, Napoleon remarked, with chilly politeness, to Hübner, now Austrian Ambassador, in the hearing of all the other Ambassadors:— “I regret that our relations with your Government are not so good as they have been; but I beg you to assure your Emperor that my personal sentiments towards him have undergone no change.” A double-edged saying; for his feelings were hardly likely to be friendly towards the originator of the scheme for snubbing him as “Sir” instead of saluting him as “Brother.” In any case it was a saying which meant war; and war was not long delayed. Francis Joseph, in fact, anticipated the inevitable by summoning Sardinia to disarm within three days; but Sardinia refused to disarm, and the French came over the Alps, beat Francis Joseph at Magenta and Solferino, and turned him out of Lombardy, though allowing him to retain Venetia. That was the beginning of the end; and the event contains an important moral,—the moral that the one permanent peril to European peace arises out of the hatred invariably felt for persons of German nationality by the races subjected to their rule.