About that time Cavour paid a visit to the Piedmontese shore of the Lago Maggiore, where he made the acquaintance of the author of the _Promessi Sposi_. Perhaps by reason of his poetic instinct Manzoni expected great things of him from the first. "That little man promises very well," he told the poet Berchet. And he opened his heart to Cavour, telling him that dream of Italian unity which he had always cherished, but which, as he said in his old age, he kept a secret for fear of being thought a madman. They looked across the blue line of water; there, on the other side, was Austria. Had Cavour said what he thought, he would have responded, "That is the first stone to move." But he did not enter upon a discussion; he merely murmured, rubbing his hands, "We shall do something!"
To the end Cavour evoked more ready sympathy among men of the other provinces than among the Piedmontese, although these last came to repose the blind trust in him which the Duke of Wellington's soldiers reposed in their leader--a trust born of the conviction that he would lead to victory. Latterly this was Victor Emmanuel's own way of feeling towards Cavour. Sympathy was always lacking.
On taking office Cavour sold his shares in the agricultural and industrial speculations which he had promoted, with the exception of one company, then not in a flourishing state, and likely to collapse if he withdrew his name. He also severed his connection with the _Risorgimento_, which had cost him much money and made him many enemies, but he believed that the services rendered by it to the cause of orderly liberty were incalculable. He never regretted his years of work in the _antro_, the wild beasts' den, as the advanced liberals called the office of the journal, a name gaily adopted by himself. As editor of the _Risorgimento_ he fought his one duel; a scandalous attack on the personal honesty of the writers was made by a Jewish financier in an obscure Nizzard sheet; an encounter with pistols followed in which no one was hurt, but both sides seemed to have aimed in earnest. There is a tragic absurdity in the possible extinction of such a life as Cavour's on so paltry an occasion; yet, in the surroundings in which he moved, he could not have passed over the worthless attack in the silent contempt it deserved without being called a coward. At the conclusion of the duel he walked away, turning his back on his adversary, but no long time elapsed before, as minister, he was taking trouble to obtain for this man some honorific bauble which his vanity coveted.