Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/463

Rh the power over its execution, and to apply for that purpose all the means which science and art are able to afford.

“We say,” remarked he to a friend, with a fine smile, “that it will be ready in eight or ten years, but it may be twelve years or more, so that the thing be but done, and this great artery formed between Italy and the remainder of Europe!”

This magnificent undertaking—both of war and peace—has occasioned to Piedmont a very considerable national debt—“and,” said lately a great banker of Geneva, M. Delarue, when speaking on the subject, “it would certainly be better to bear its own national debt and to advance, whilst means are prepared for its liquidation.”

The railway through Mont Cenis is one of these means, a grand bond, but which will assuredly be honored in a grand manner.

Of late, several persons have said to Cavour, “Ought you not to pause, or to go on more slowly?" To which he has replied, “I have to guide a carriage with four horses down hill. When we have reached the level and begin to go up hill again, then I will drive slowly!”

Cavour has continually met with many enemies, and much enmity during this progressive advance. They bring against him occasionally, in the chambers, the worst accusations. But they trouble him very little. He listens to them calmly, sometimes with a sardonic smile, sometimes with such a good-humored expression, as ought to disarm the opponents, if any thing be able to disarm party bitterness, especially in