There was, too, another influence which must never be forgotten in estimating the difficulties of Charles Albert. He was a strong Roman Catholic, at a time when the connection between reverence for the Pope and reverence for the Church was, perhaps, closer than it had been at most previous periods of the history of the Papacy. The commonplace tyrannies of Leo XII. and Pius VIII. had not wholly dispelled the halo which the heroic attitude of Pius VII.'s early days had shed round the Papacy; and it seems highly probable that the most puzzling act of Charles Albert's life, his share in the French invasion of Spain, had been due, to a large extent, to that strong religious sentiment which gathered in so peculiar a manner round the kings of Spain. A man influenced by such sentiments could not fail to remark that the most vigorous and determined of the insurgents of 1831 had directed their attacks against the Papacy; and it might well seem to him that a letter which called on him to oppose the Austrian restorers of the papal power was the utterance of an enemy to the religion of the country. But the fact was, as Mazzini afterwards confessed, that any king who was to undertake the work which he had suggested to Charles Albert must possess at once "genius, Napoleonic energy, and the highest virtue. Genius, in order to conceive the idea of the enterprize and the conditions of victory; energy, not to front its dangers--for to a man of genius they would be few and brief--but to dare to break at once with every tie of family or alliance, and the habits and necessities of any existence distinct and removed from that of the people, and to extricate himself both from the web of diplomacy and the counsels of wicked or cowardly advisers; virtue enough voluntarily to renounce a portion at least of his actual power; for it is only by redeeming them from slavery that a people may be roused to battle and to sacrifice." If such were the qualities required by any prince who undertook this office, what must have been needed from one who had to contend with a Power which had ten years before helped to crush out the aspirations of his people, and which was just then triumphantly ruling in the centre of Italy? A man of genius might have undertaken the task; Charles Albert was only a man who "would and would not." But, if Charles Albert refused to listen to Mazzini's appeal, he had no alternative but to protest against it; and he did so by banishing Mazzini, under pain of imprisonment if he should return to Italy.