Of a sudden the individual, who was walking very quickly, vigorously rubbed his hands. The trait revealed the man--it was Cavour; he had just heard that Garibaldi, eluding the Neapolitan fleet, had disembarked with all his men at Marsala. Things were entering a new and critical phase, and it was not difficult to foretell that, while the hero would have all the laurels, the statesman would have all the thorns. This was a small matter to Cavour: they were again on the high seas, he said cheerfully, but what was the good of thinking of peace and quiet till Italy was made?
The Sardinian Government adopted the policy of assisting the expedition now as far as they could without being compromised with the Powers of Europe--but no farther. This _via media_ had the merit of succeeding; it was, however, severely criticised by friends and foes at the time. On May 24 Prince Napoleon said in the presence of Marshal MacMahon, Prosper Mérimée, N.W. Senior, and others, that Cavour had done too much or too little; he should have kept Garibaldi back, or given him 5000 men; he had thrown on himself and on "my father-in-law" all the discredit of favouring the enterprise, and he would have been no more blamed and hated if he had given it real support. On higher grounds Massimo d'Azeglio was horrified at the lack of straightforwardness in mining the Bourbon edifice from below instead of declaring war. "Garibaldi has no minister at Naples, and he has gone to risk his skin, and long life to him, but we!!" Taking this view, the immaculate Massimo, as governor of Milan, impounded a number of rifles intended for the Thousand, and so nearly wrecked the affair. The King of Naples naturally applied the same criticism. "Don Peppino," he said, "had clean hands, but he was only a blind, behind which was ranged Piedmont with the Western Powers, which had vowed the end of his dynasty." Whether international law was violated or not, there was no real deception, if the essence of deception is to deceive, for the Neapolitan Government saw Cavour's hand everywhere, even where it was not.
Cavour was deterred from declaring war by the fear of foreign intervention. England was the only Power which applauded the drama enacting in Sicily. The cover afforded by English ships to the landing of Garibaldi was no doubt a happy accident, but, as Signor Crispi often repeats to this day, the landing could hardly have taken place without it. "C'est infâme et de la part des Anglais aussi," the Czar wrote on the telegram which announced the safe arrival of the "brigands" at Marsala. Cavour was afraid lest Russian sympathy with the court of Naples should take a more inconvenient form than angry words. Russia, however, remained quiescent, though "geography" was stated to be the only reason. Prussia also discovered that Naples was some way off. Yet there was nothing which the Prince Regent so disliked as to see kings overthrown, until he began to do it himself. But the two Northern Powers (and this was the meaning of the talk about geography) did not want to act without Austria. The Austrian Queen Dowager did all she could to obtain help to save the crown, which she expected would pass from the weakly Francis to her own son, but public opinion in Austria had long been irritated by the supineness and corruption of the Neapolitan _régime_, and though the Government protested, it did not go to the rescue. It is a question whether it would not have been forced to go, if, at the outset, Cavour had declared war. France joined in the protests of the other Powers, and Cavour's enemies spread a monstrous rumour that he was going to give up Genoa to win Napoleon's complaisance. In reply to an anxious inquiry from the British Government, he declared that under no circumstances would he yield another foot of ground.