Wednesday, 29th.
You are to make a description of the monument to Count Cavour. You
can do it. But who was Count Cavour? You cannot understand at
present. For the present this is all you know: he was for many
years the prime minister of Piemont. It was he who sent the
Piemontese army to the Crimea to raise once more, with the victory
of the Cernaia, our military glory, which had fallen with the
defeat at Novara; it was he who made one hundred and fifty thousand
Frenchmen descend from the Alps to chase the Austrians from
Lombardy; it was he who governed Italy in the most solemn period of
our revolution; who gave, during those years, the most potent
impulse to the holy enterprise of the unification of our
country,--he with his luminous mind, with his invincible
perseverance, with his more than human industry. Many generals have
passed terrible hours on the field of battle; but he passed more
terrible ones in his cabinet, when his enormous work might suffer
destruction at any moment, like a fragile edifice at the tremor of
an earthquake. Hours, nights of struggle and anguish did he pass,
sufficient to make him issue from it with reason distorted and
death in his heart. And it was this gigantic and stormy work which
shortened his life by twenty years. Nevertheless, devoured by the
fever which was to cast him into his grave, he yet contended
desperately with the malady in order to accomplish something for
his country. "It is strange," he said sadly on his death-bed, "I no
longer know how to read; I can no longer read."
While they were bleeding him, and the fever was increasing, he was
thinking of his country, and he said imperiously: "Cure me; my mind
is clouding over; I have need of all my faculties to manage
important affairs." When he was already reduced to extremities, and
the whole city was in a tumult, and the king stood at his bedside,
he said anxiously, "I have many things to say to you, Sire, many
things to show you; but I am ill; I cannot, I cannot;" and he was
in despair.
And his feverish thoughts hovered ever round the State, round the
new Italian provinces which had been united with us, round the many
things which still remained to be done. When delirium seized him,
"Educate the children!" he exclaimed, between his gasps for
breath,--"educate the children and the young people--govern with
liberty!"
His delirium increased; death hovered over him, and with burning
words he invoked General Garibaldi, with whom he had had
disagreements, and Venice and Rome, which were not yet free: he had
vast visions of the future of Italy and of Europe; he dreamed of a
foreign invasion; he inquired where the corps of the army were, and
the generals; he still trembled for us, for his people. His great
sorrow was not, you understand, that he felt that his life was
going, but to see himself fleeing his country, which still had need
of him, and for which he had, in a few years, worn out the
measureless forces of his miraculous organism. He died with the
battle-cry in his throat, and his death was as great as his life.
Now reflect a little, Enrico, what sort of a thing is our labor,
which nevertheless so weighs us down; what are our griefs, our
death itself, in the face of the toils, the terrible anxieties, the
tremendous agonies of these men upon whose hearts rests a world!
Think of this, my son, when you pass before that marble image, and
say to it, "Glory!" in your heart.