"Calm yourself," the emperor of the French said to M. de Cavour, in the month of April, 1856, after the closing of the congress of Paris,--"Calm yourself; I have a presentiment that the present peace will not last long."[28] Prince Gortchakof had without doubt the same presentiment, and perhaps others more positive in this respect. The thought of "making war for an idea," the thought of freeing Italy, had long been fixed in the mind of Napoleon III.; at the moment of signing the treaty of Paris "with an eagle's feather," he let his hidden and dreaming glance fall on the classic plains of Lombardy. Now, for the enterprise which France meditated against Austria, and in which it could scarcely count on an angry neutrality of England, it was thought useful to secure in good season the friendship of Russia and Prussia. Prussia had emerged from the Oriental crisis very much weakened with its policy "of the free hand;" England, Austria, and Turkey had even had little desire to admit it to the honors of the congress. The president of the council at Berlin, M. de Manteuffel, was obliged to wait long in the antechamber, while the plenipotentiaries of Europe were in full deliberation, and it was only at the instance of the emperor of the French that the Prussian envoy was at last admitted. Napoleon III. insisted absolutely, in 1856, on allowing _that_ Prussia to retake its position in Europe which fourteen years later was to dethrone him! As for Russia, we have already spoken of the politenesses and cordialities of which Count Orlof was the recipient from France during all the time of the congress. Since then, in the successive arrangements of the various difficulties which the execution of some of the clauses of the treaty of Paris caused to arise (Belgrade, Isle of Sérpents, navigation of the Danube, etc.), one saw the arguments or interpretations of the Russian plenipotentiary sustained almost constantly by the plenipotentiary of France. In the different and numerous conferences and commissions which followed in these years, 1856-1859, for regulating the pending questions, the distribution of the votes was almost invariably thus: England and Austria on one side, on the other France, Russia, and Prussia.[29]