But there was still needed a figure-head who must be placed in front of the movement, if it was to retain any appearance of monarchical Constitutionalism. Whatever casual remarks Victor Emmanuel may have let fall, it soon became evident that _he_ was disposed to resist the Constitutional movement, and he even began to increase the guards about his palace. Charles Felix, his brother, the next heir to the throne, was known to be a yet sterner champion of despotism than the King himself; and it was under these circumstances that the eyes of the Liberals of Piedmont were for the first time turned to the head of the younger branch of the House of Savoy, Charles Albert, Prince of Carignano. He had been brought up as a simple citizen in a public school, and had specially attracted attention by the favour which he had shown to Alberto Nota, whom he had made his secretary. Nota was a writer who had set himself to restore the national comic theatre in Piedmont, who had excited the suspicion of the courtiers of Victor Emmanuel by his Liberal principles, and who had at last been banished from Turin. But, though the favour shown by Charles Albert to Nota was the fact in the Prince's life which had most impressed the Piedmontese, other influences had already been brought to bear on him; for he had also studied at Paris under an Abbé, who had impressed on him a loathing for the French Revolution. He was only twenty-three, and was still hesitating between the lessons of these rival teachers. But before Santa Rosa and his friends could carry out their schemes, the first sign of protest against tyranny in Turin was given from a different quarter. Although the desire for liberty had not yet penetrated to the poorer classes of Italy, and though the leadership of these movements naturally fell into the hands of men of noble birth, like Confalonieri and Santa Rosa, yet there was another class in the State which was already full of the new ideas, and which was eventually to play an important part as a link between the more intelligent members of the aristocracy and the still silent classes of the community. The University students of Germany, Austria, and Italy, from the time of the gathering at Jena in 1816 down to the fall of Venice in August, 1849, were to hold a position in the great movements of the time which affected considerably the character of those movements, both for good and evil.