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When Ricasoli took office he and the republican baker, Dolfi, who was his invaluable auxiliary, were possibly the only two thorough-going unionists-at-all-costs in Tuscany; when he resigned it twelve months later there was not a partisan of autonomy left in the province. This was the work of the "Iron Baron."
Then of a sudden the low, ceaseless hum of ten thousand voices is exchanged for a loud cheer, and the bands begin to play, and the royal carriages, escorted by a running crowd, pass along the quays; and wherever the throng is thickest, you can tell that Victor Emmanuel is to be found, with Ricasoli by his side.
It was at this critical juncture that Baron Bettino Ricasoli began his year of autocracy. His programme was: neither fusions nor annexations, but union of the Italian peoples under the constitutional sceptre of Victor Emmanuel. It was Tuscany's business, he said, to make the new kingdom of Italy. He looked upon himself as providentially appointed to carry that business into effect.
A still more important event is the presence of Baron Ricasoli, whom I met yesterday evening on coming here. The President of the Council was coming from Florence, and, after stopping a few hours at the villa of Cicognolo, where Victor Emmanuel and the royal household are staying, he drove to Torre Malamberti to confer with General Lamarmora and Count Pettiti.
The others were going their separate ways, pages and alfieri in silk doublets and parti-coloured hosen arm-in-arm with their friends in black broadcloth, standard-bearers smoking cigarettes, knights unhelmed and wiping heated brows with red cotton handkerchiefs. "I will go down the Via Ricasoli with you," Olive said. "It is I who should take you home."
They were in sharp contrast to the Puritan band in the valley of the Connecticut, which his pen pictured in the finishing touches of "The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish," when in his study at Casa Ricasoli. Press censorship and no English printing-house in Florence forced Cooper to leave his family and go to Marseilles. His letters give some pretty pictures which passed his carriage windows on the way.
Ricasoli was rigid, frigid, a frequenter of the straightest possible roads; Rattazzi, supple, accommodating, with an incorrigible partiality for umbrageous by-ways.
He had assured the British Government in writing that he had no present intention of attacking Austria, and in this he was perfectly sincere. Still he did not shrink from the possibility. He wrote to Ricasoli: "If we were beaten by overwhelming force, the cause of Italy would not be lost; she would arise from her ruins, as Piedmont arose from the field of Novara."
But Baccio, having already drawn all the money, entered into negotiations with Messer Giovan Battista da Ricasoli, Bishop of Cortona, who was in Rome on business of Duke Cosimo's, to depart from Rome and go to Florence in order to serve Cosimo in the matter of the fountains of his villa of Castello and the tomb of his father, Signor Giovanni.
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