Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/460

476 soon overcomes the occasional disease, and his natural good-heartedness prevents him from entertaining bitterness towards political enemies.

“You make enemies in the chambers by your ironical smile!” said one of his friends to him one day, “one can see that you look down upon your opponents.”

“What would you have?” replied Cavour. “It is stronger than I am;—and why do people say such stupid things to me?”

On one occasion he fought a duel, but it was with a man who had attacked his honor, and would not recall the charge before bullets were exchanged.

Cavour had great difficulty, as the son of a most highly unpopular man, in obtaining the public confidence, and many persons considering it purely impossible that he could do so, said of him, “If this young man were not laboring under an insurmountable burden of unpopularity, he would be the man which Piedmont requires.” It was in the periodical Il Resorgimento, by means of which Count Balbo, and other patriots, led onward Piedmont into the right understanding of legitimate reform, that Cavour first exhibited his unusual qualities, especially in questions of political and national economy—his clear glance, and his logical mode of thought and power of representation. Afterwards he raised his voice in the chamber of deputies for the discontinuance of a separate judicial court for the clergy, as well as for several other constitutional reforms, with a power, which soon dispersed the mist of unpopularity from the young statesman, and caused it to be acknowledged what