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Updated: June 28, 2025
Cavour's presence of mind prompted him to leave it where it lay. He did not say, "No, we are not working for Italian unity; no, we do not wish to overthrow the Pope."
It was hopeless, he told himself; in thirteen hundred years the bitter winds of Venus would have destroyed any hint of Cavour's site, assuming the old man had reached Venus successfully. But grimly Alan continued to circle the area. Maybe Cavour had been forced to land elsewhere, he thought. Maybe he never got here. There were a million maybes. He computed his orbit and locked the ship in.
On Cavour's own grounds, those of expediency, it might be objected that a bargain which on one side you allow to be discreditable leaves the legacy of an indestructible desire on that side to wipe out the discredit by tearing it up.
The ship swung down into the cloud layer; floating wisps of gray vapor streamed past the orbiting Cavour. Finally Alan broke through, navigating now on manual, following as best he could Cavour's old computations. He guided the craft into a wide-ranging spiral orbit three thousand feet above the surface of Venus, and adjusted his viewscreens for fine pickup.
This was the pendant to the interview of Plombières. But Bismarck had improved on Cavour's example; he did not want so much, he asked only for neutrality: the King of Prussia would not be called upon, like Victor Emmanuel, to surrender the old possessions of his House. Bismarck returned to Berlin with his health invigorated by the Atlantic winds and his spirits raised by success.
Had not Cavour felt so conscious of his strength he would have been afraid of offending Napoleon by "arming the revolution"; but he knew that the best way to deal with men of the Emperor's stamp is to show that you do not fear them. Garibaldi, who never did anything by halves, placed himself and his influence absolutely at Cavour's disposal.
After Cavour's death, Ricasoli, the head of the ministry, led the constitutional party; and Ratazzi, who succeeded him and had been more in sympathy with the Garibaldians, did not deviate from his predecessor's cautious policy. The relations of the Italian government to France, even obliged the king to interfere to put down a rising, set on foot by Garibaldi, for driving the French out of Rome.
Hence war. And England and France and Cavour's Sardinians are fighting Russia. Perhaps the Latin church is the inspiring cause. Minds and noses concur, and the result is conscience. America is in a distressed condition and growing worse. Politics raves. Malice, destroying forces are abroad. Always war with or without the sword.
The occasion was most opportune; for Austria was then suspected and disliked both by Russia and the Western Powers owing to her policy of armed neutrality. Nevertheless the reward of Cavour's diplomacy came slowly and incompletely.
The final page of the diary had evidently been Cavour's dying thoughts. In a handwriting increasingly ragged and untidy, Cavour had indited a paragraph forgiving the world for its scorn, hoping that some day mankind would indeed have easy access to the stars. The paragraph ended in midsentence. It was, thought Alan, a moving testament from a great human being.
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