In the two months which Cavour spent in Paris he perceived very clearly that Walewski and the other French ministers would have to be reckoned more as opponents than friends in the future development of affairs. He found, however, two men who could be trusted to continue his work by incessantly pushing Napoleon III. in an Italian direction; one was Prince Napoleon, the other, Dr. Conneau, a person entirely in the Imperial confidence. Henceforth Dr. Conneau was the secret, and for a long time quite unsuspected, intermediary between Cavour and the Emperor. The idea of establishing this channel of communication first occurred to Count Arese, whose own influence at the Tuileries, though exercised with prudent reserve, was of no slight importance. This Milanese nobleman personified, as it were all the proud hatred of the Lombard aristocracy for an alien yoke. The truest and most disinterested friend of Queen Hortense, Arese remained faithfully attached to her son in good and evil fortune. He would never turn the friendship to account for himself. When Napoleon offered to ask as a personal favour for the removal of the sequestration on his family property, he answered that he preferred to take his chance with the rest. He won the lasting regard of the Empress, though she knew that he influenced Napoleon in a sense contrary to her own political sympathies. The visits of this high-minded gentleman and devoted friend were as welcome at a court crowded with self-seekers and charlatans as they were to be later in the solitude of Chislehurst. Arese was in Paris during the Congress, having been chosen by the king, at Cavour's urgent request, to carry his congratulations to the Emperor on the birth of the Prince Imperial.
At the earlier sittings of the Congress, Cavour kept in the background; his instinct as a man of the world, and that mixture of astuteness and simplicity which he shared with many of his countrymen (even those of no education), guided him in filling a difficult and, in some respects, an embarrassing position. He spoke, when he did speak, in as brief terms as could serve to express his opinion. But this modest attitude only threw into relief his inalienable superiority. He cast about the shadow of future greatness. The representative of the second-rate Power, who sat there only by favour, was to make so much more history than any of his colleagues! Curiously enough the only one of the plenipotentiaries who had a prior acquaintance with Cavour was the Austrian, Count Buol, who was formerly ambassador at Turin. In old days, before 1848, he had played whist with him. "I know M. de Cavour," he said; "I am afraid he will give us _de fil à retordre_." Cavour carefully avoided, however, unnecessary friction. Loyal to both the allies, he managed to steer between their not always consonant aims while preserving his own independence, by taking what seemed, on the whole, the most liberal side in debated questions. With Count Buol he maintained courteous if formal relations, and he soon made a thorough conquest of Count Orloff, who did not begin by being prepossessed in favour of the minister who alone had caused the Sardinian attack on Russia, but who ended on far better terms with him than with his Austrian colleague, of whom he said to Cavour in a voice meant to be heard, "Count Buol talks exactly as if Austria had taken Sebastopol!"