Cavour now asked Parliament to vote a war loan of £2,000,000, which was passed by a majority of 81 out of 151 votes. No foreign banker would undertake to negotiate the loan, but it was twice covered by Italian buyers, nearly all small capitalists, who put their money into it as a patriotic duty. Amongst the few deputies who opposed the loan was the old apostle of retrogression, Count Solaro della Margherita, who raised his solitary voice against the tide of revolution; and the Savoyard the Marquis Costa de Beauregard whose speech was pathetic from the melancholy foreboding which pervaded it that the making of Italy meant the unmaking of Savoy. Speaking in the name of his fellow-countrymen, the Marquis reconfirmed the profound love of Savoy for her Royal House and her total lack of solidarity with the aspirations of Italy. With time the Savoyards might have learnt to be Italians as their king had learnt to be an Italian king. Or they might not. Possibly the best solution would have been to join Savoy to the Swiss Confederation, though the martial instincts of the race were not favourable to their Conversion into peaceful Helvetic citizens. From one point of view, that of military defence, the retention of the province was of infinitely more moment to the future Italy than to little Piedmont. Sardinia could keep the peace with France for an indefinite period; Italy cannot. What is true of Savoy is far more true of Nice. To have it in foreign keeping is to have a very partially reformed burglar inside your house.
'Notre roi,' said an old ragged fisherman of the Lac de Bourget to the writer of this book,--'Notre roi nous a vendus.' Not willingly did Victor Emmanuel incur that charge, in which the rebound from love to hate was so clearly heard; not willingly did he give up Maurienne, cradle of his race, Hautecombe, grave of his fathers. It was the greatest sacrifice, he said, that Italy could have asked of him. Nor is there any reason to doubt his word. But it is incorrect to suppose, as many have supposed, that Cavour promised at Plombières to give up Savoy (Nice he did not promise) without the King's knowledge. Before he went there, he had brought Victor Emmanuel over to his own belief, justified or not, that without a bait Napoleon could not be got to move. Directly after the interview, he wrote a full account of it to the King, in which he said: 'When the future fate of Italy was arranged, the Emperor asked me what France would have, and if your Majesty would cede Savoy and the county of Nice?' To which Cavour answered 'Yes' as to Savoy, but objected that Nice was essentially Italian. The Emperor twirled his moustache several times, and only said that these were secondary questions, about which there would be time to think later.