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Balbo's work, Le Speranze d'Italia, had lately created an impression, only second to that made by the Primato of Gioberti. Practical men like Cavour preferred the simple programme which Balbo put forward the liberation of Italy from foreign yoke before all things to Gioberti's mystical outpourings, much as they pleased the general.

The Bishop of Imola was frequently in the house of the Count and Countess Pasolini, who kept their friend well supplied with the new books on Italian affairs; thus he read not only D'Azeglio's Cast di Romagna, but also Cesare Balbo's Le Speranze d'Italia, which propounded a plan for an Italian federation, and Gioberti's Primato morale e civile degli Italiani, in which this plan was elaborately developed.

The day on which Count Pasolini gave him a copy of Il Primato he created that great, and under some aspects pathetic illusion, the reforming Pope. The Conclave opened on the 14th of June 1846. During the Bishop of Imola's journey to Rome a white pigeon had perched several times on his carriage.

'Debt, Eccellenza hunger! crimes of blood! Sono il suo primato l'unico! He threw at her a look sparkling and venomous. All the grace of his youth had vanished. As he sat there, Eleanor in a flash saw in him the conspirator and the firebrand that a few more years would make of him. 'Ah! said the Contessa, flushing.