Part 10

But all the same the _prestige_ of Victor Emanuel was gone. Then Europe began to look at the man coolly, and estimate him without glamour and without romance. Then it began to listen to the very many stories against him which his enemies could tell. Alas! these stories were not all untrue. Of course there were grotesque and hideous exaggerations. There are in Europe some three or four personages of the highest rank whom scandal delights to assail, and of whom it tells stories which common sense and common feeling alike compel us to reject. It would be wholly impossible even to hint at some of the charges which scandal in Europe persistently heaped on Victor Emanuel, the Emperor Napoleon III., Prince Napoleon, and the reigning King of the Netherlands. If one-half the stories told of these four men were true, then Europe would hold at present four personages of the highest rank who might have tutored Caligula in the arts of recondite debauchery, and have looked down on Alexander the Sixth as a prudish milksop. But I think no reasonable person will have much difficulty in sifting the probable truth out of the monstrous exaggerations. No one can doubt that Victor Emanuel is a man of gross habits and tastes, and is, or was, addicted to coarse and ignoble immoralities. "The manners of a mosstrooper and the morality of a he goat," was the description which my friend John Francis Maguire, the distinguished Roman Catholic member of the House of Commons, gave, in one of his Parliamentary speeches, of King Victor Emanuel. This was strong language, and it was the language of a prejudiced though honest political and religious partisan; but it was not, all things considered, a very bad description. Moreover, it was mildness, it was compliment--nay, it was base flattery--when compared with the hideous accusations publicly and distinctly made against Victor Emanuel by one of Garibaldi's sons, not to speak of other accusers, and privately whispered by slanderous gossip all over Europe. One peculiarity about Victor Emanuel worthy of notice is that he has no luxury in his tastes. He is, I believe, abstemious in eating and drinking, caring only for the homeliest fare. He has sat many times at the head of a grand state banquet, where the rarest viands, the most superb wines were abundant, and never removed the napkin from his plate, never tasted a morsel or emptied a glass. He had had his plain fare at an earlier hour, and cared nothing for the triumphs of cookery or the choicest products of the vine. He has thus sat, in good-humored silence, his hand leaning on the hilt of his sword, through a long, long banquet of seemingly endless courses, which to him was a pageant, a ceremonial duty, and nothing more. He delights in chamois-hunting--in hunting of almost any kind--in horses, in dogs, and in women of a certain coarse and gross description. There is nothing of the Richelieu or Lauzun, or even the Francis the First, about the dull, I had almost said harmless, immoralities of the King of Italy. Men in private and public station have done far greater harm, caused far more misery than ever he did, and yet escaped almost unwhipt of justice. The man has (or had, for people say he is reformed now) the coarse, easily-gratified tastes of a sailor turned ashore after a long cruise--and such tastes are not kingly; and that is about all that one feels fairly warranted in saying either to condemn or to palliate the vices of Victor Emanuel. He absolutely wants all element of greatness. He is not even a great soldier. He has boisterous animal courage, and finds the same excitement in leading a charge as in hunting the chamois. But he has nothing even of the very moderate degree of military capacity possessed by a dashing _sabreur_ like Murat. It seems beyond doubt that it was the infatuation he displayed in attempting the personal direction of affairs which led to the breakdown at Custozza. The man is, in fact, like one of the rough jagers described in Schiller's "Wallenstein's Camp"--just this, and nothing more. When Garibaldi was in the zenith of his fortunes and fame in 1860, Victor Emanuel declared privately to a friend that the height of his ambition would be to follow the gallant guerilla leader as a mere soldier in the field. Certainly, when the two men entered Naples together, every one must have felt that their places ought to have been reversed. How like a king, an ideal king--a king of poetry and painting and romance--looked Garibaldi in the superb serenity of his untaught grace and sweetness and majesty. How rude, uncouth, clownish, even vulgar, looked the big, brawny, ungainly trooper whom people had to salute as King. When Garibaldi went to visit the hospitals where the wounded of the short struggle were lying, how womanlike he was in his sympathetic tenderness; how light and noiseless was his step; how gentle his every gesture; what a sweet word of genial compassion or encouragement he had for every sufferer. The burly King strode and clattered along like a dragoon swaggering through the crowd at a country fair. Not that Victor Emanuel wanted good nature, but that his rude _physique_ had so little in it of the sympathetic or the tender.

Was there ever known such a whimsical, harmless, odd saturnalia as Naples presented during those extraordinary days? I am thinking now chiefly of the men who, mostly uncalled-for, "rallied round" the Revolution, and came from all manner of holes and corners to offer their services to Garibaldi, and to exhibit themselves in the capacity of freedom's friends, soldiers, and scholars. Hardly a hero, or crackbrain, or rantipole in Europe, one would think, but must have been then on exhibition somewhere in Naples. Father Gavazzi harangued from one position; Alexandre Dumas, accompanied by his faithful "Admiral Emile," directed affairs from another. Edwin James, then a British criminal lawyer and popular member of Parliament, was to be seen tearing round in a sort of semi-military costume, with pistols stuck in his belt. The worn, thoughtful, melancholy face of Mazzini was, for a short time at least, to be seen in juxtaposition with the cockney visage of an ambitious and restless common councilman from the city of London, who has lived all his life since on the glorious memories and honors of that good time. The House of Lords, the House of Commons, and the Guildhall of London were lavishly represented there. Men like Türr, the dashing Hungarian and Mieroslawski, the "Red" leader of Polish revolution--men to whom battle and danger were as the breath of their nostrils--were buttonholed and advised by heavy British vestrymen and pert Parisian journalists. Hardly any man or woman entered Naples from a foreign country at that astonishing time who did not believe that he or she had some special counsel to give, which Victor Emanuel or Garibaldi or some one of their immediate staff was bound to listen to and accept. Woman's Rights were pretty well represented in that pellmell. There was a Countess something or other--French, they said--who wore short petticoats and trousers, had silver-mounted pistols in her belt and silver spurs on her heels, and was generally believed to have done wonders in "the field"--what field no one would stop to ask. There was Jessie Mario White, modest, pleasant, fair-haired woman, wife of a gallant gentleman and soldier--Jessie White, who made no exhibition of herself, but did then and since faithful and valuable work for Italian wounded, such as Italy ought not soon to forget. There was Mrs. Chambers--Mrs. Colonel Chambers--the Mrs. "Putney Giles" of Disraeli's "Lothair"--very prominent everywhere, sounding the special eulogies of Garibaldi with tireless tongue, and utterly overshadowing her quiet husband, who (the husband I mean) afterwards stood by Garibaldi's side at Aspromonte. Exeter Hall had sent out powerful delegations, in the firm faith apparently that Garibaldi would at their request order Naples forthwith to break up its shrines and images of saints and become Protestant; and that Naples would at once obey. Never was such a time of dreams and madness and fussiness, of splendid aspirations and silly self-seeking vanity, of chivalry and daring, and true wisdom and nonsense. It was a time naturally of many disappointments; and one disappointment to almost everybody was His Majesty King Victor Emanuel. His Majesty seemed at least not much to care about the whole affair from the beginning. He went through it as if he didn't quite understand what it was all about, and didn't think it worth the trouble of trying. People who saw him at that splendid moment when, the forces of Garibaldi joining with the regular Sardinian troops after all had been won, Garibaldi and the King met for the first time in that crisis, and the soldier hailed the sovereign as "King of Italy!"--people who saw and studied that picturesque historic meeting have told me that there was no more emotion of any kind on Victor Emanuel's face than if he were receiving a formal address from the mayor of a country town. "I thank you," were his only words of reply; and I am assured that it was not "I thank _you_," with emphasis on the last word to indicate that the King acknowledged how much he owed to his great soldier; but simply "I thank you," as he might have thanked a groom who opened a stable door for him. Perhaps the very depth and grandeur of the King's emotions rendered him incapable of finding any expression for them. Let us hope so. But I have had the positive assurances of some who saw the scene, that if any such emotions were felt the royal countenance concealed them as completely as though they never had been.

In truth, I presume that the whole thing really was a terrible bore to the royal Rawdon Crawley, who found himself compelled by cursed spite to play the part of a patriot king. The Pope, the ultramontane bishops, and the ultramontane press have always been ringing fierce changes on the inordinate and wicked ambition of Victor Emanuel. I am convinced the poor man has no more ambition than his horse. If he could have chalked out his own career for himself, he would probably have asked nothing better than to be allowed to devote his life to chamois-hunting, with a hunter's homely fare, and the companionship of a few friends (some fat ladies among the number) with whom he could talk and make jokes in the _patois_ of Piedmont. This, and perhaps a battle-field and a dashing charge every now and then, would probably have realized his dreams of the _summum bonum_. But some implacable destiny, embodied in the form of a Cavour or a Garibaldi, was always driving on the stout King and bidding him get up and attempt great things--be a patriot and a hero. Fancy Rawdon Crawley impelled, or rather compelled by the inexorable command of Becky his wife, to go forth in quest of the Holy Grail, and one may perhaps be able to guess what Victor Emanuel's perplexity and reluctance were when he was bidden to set out for the accomplishment of the regeneration of Italy. "Honor to those to whom honor is due; honor to old Mother Baubo," says some one in "Faust." Honor on that principle, then, to King Victor Emanuel. He did get up and go forth and undertake to bear his part in the adventure. And here seriously let me speak of the one high merit of Victor Emanuel's career. He is not a hero; he is not a statesman or even a politician; he is not a patriot in any grand, exalted sense. He would like to be idle, and perhaps to be despotic. But he has proved that he understands the true responsibilities and duties of a constitutional King better than many sovereigns of higher intellect and better character. He always did go, or at least endeavor to go, where the promptings of his ministers, the commands of his one imperious minister, or the voice of the country directed. There must be a great struggle in the mind of Victor Emanuel between his duty as a king and his duty as a Roman Catholic, when he enters into antagonism with the Pope. Beyond doubt Victor Emanuel is a superstitious Catholic. Of late years his constitution has once or twice threatened to give way, and he is probably all the more anxious to be reconciled with the Church. Perhaps he would be glad enough to lay down the load of royalty altogether and become again an accepted and devoted Catholic, and hunt his chamois with a quieted conscience. But still, impelled by what must be some sort of patriotism and sense of duty, he accepts his uncongenial part of constitutional King, and strives to do all that the voice of his people demands. It is probable that at no time was the King personally much attached to his illustrious minister Cavour. The genius and soul of Cavour were too oppressively imperial, high-reaching, and energetic for the homely, plodding King. With all his external levity Count Cavour was terribly in earnest, and he must often have seemed a dreadful bore to his sovereign. Cavour knew himself the master, and did not always take pains to conceal his knowledge. He would sometimes adopt the most direct and vigorous language in remonstrating with the King if the latter did not act on valuable advice at the right moment. Sometimes, when things went decidedly against Cavour's wishes, the minister would take the monarch to task more roundly than even the most good-natured monarchs are likely to approve. When Napoleon the Third disappointed Cavour and all Italy by the sudden peace of Villafranca, I have heard that Cavour literally denounced Victor Emanuel for consenting to the arrangement. Count Arrivabene, an able writer, has given a very vivid and interesting description of Cavour's demeanor when he reached the Sardinian headquarters on his way to an interview with the King and learned what had been done. He was literally in a "tearing rage." He tore off his hat and dashed it down, he clenched his hands, he stamped wildly, gesticulated furiously, became red and purple, foamed at the mouth, and grew inarticulate for very passion. He believed that he and Italy were sold--as indeed they were; and it was while this temper was yet on him that he went to see the King, and denounced him, as I have said. Now this sort of thing certainly could not have been agreeable to Victor Emanuel; and yet he patiently accepted Cavour as a kind of glorious necessity. He never sought, as many another king in such _duresse_ would have done, to weaken his minister's influence and authority by showing open sullenness and dissatisfaction. Ratazzi, with his pliable ways and his entire freedom from any wearisome earnestness or devotion to any particular cause, was naturally a far more companionable and agreeable minister for the King than the untiring and imperious Cavour. Accordingly, it was well known that Ratazzi was more of a personal favorite; but the King never seems to have acted otherwise than loyally and honestly toward Cavour. Ricasoli was all but intolerable to the King. Ricasoli was proud and stern; and he was, moreover, a somewhat rigid moralist, which Cavour hardly professed to be. The King writhed under the government of Ricasoli, and yet, despite all that was at the time whispered, he cannot, I think, be fairly accused of having done anything personally to rid himself of an obnoxious minister. Indeed, the single merit of Victor Emanuel's character, if we put aside the element of personal courage, is its rough integrity. He is a _galantuomo_, an honest man--in that sense, a man of his word. He gave his word to constitutional government and to Italy, and he appears to have kept the word in each case according to his lights.

But his popularity among his subjects, the interest felt in him by the world, have long been steadily on the wane. Years and years ago he ceased to retain the faintest gleam of the halo of romance that once was, despite of himself, thrown around him. His people care little or nothing for him. Why, indeed, should they care anything? The military _prestige_ which he had won, such as it was, vanished at Custozza, and it was his evil destiny, hardly his fault, to be almost always placed in a position of antagonism to the one only Italian who since Cavour's death had an enthusiastic following in Italy. Aspromonte was a calamity for Victor Emanuel. One can hardly blame him; one can hardly see how he could have done otherwise. The greatest citizen or soldier in America or England, if he attempted to levy an army of his own, and make war from American or English territory upon a neighboring State, would surely have seen his bands dispersed and found himself arrested by order of his government; and it would never have occurred to any one to think that the government was doing a harsh, ungrateful, or improper thing. It would be the necessary, rightful execution of a disagreeable duty, and that is all. But the conditions of Garibaldi's case, like the one splendid service he had rendered, were so entirely abnormal and without precedent, the whole thing was from first to last so much more a matter of national sentiment than of political law, that national sentiment insisted on judging Garibaldi and the King in this case too, and at least a powerful, passionate minority declared Victor Emanuel an ingrate and a traitor. Mentana was almost as bad for the King as Custozza. The voice of the country, so far as one could understand its import, seemed to declare that when the King had once ordered the Italian troops to cross the frontier, he should have ordered them to go on; that if they had actually occupied Rome, France would have recognized accomplished facts; that as it was, Italy offended France and the Pope by stepping over the barrier of the convention of September, only to humiliate herself by stepping back again without having accomplished anything. Certainly the policy of the Italian Government at such a crisis was weak, miserable, even contemptible. Then indeed Italy might well have exclaimed, "Oh for one hour of Cavour!" One hour of the man of genius and courage, who, if he had moved forward, would not have darted back again! Perhaps it was unfair to hold the King responsible for the mistakes of his ministers. But when a once popular King has to be pleaded for on that sole ground, it is pretty clear that there is an end to his popularity. So with Victor Emanuel. The world began to forget him; his subjects began to despise him. Even the thrilling events that have lately taken place in Italy, the sudden crowning of the national edifice--the realization of that hope which so long appeared but a dream--which Cavour himself declared would be the most slow and difficult to realize of all Italy's hopes--even the possession of Rome hardly seems to have brought back one ray of the old popularity on the heavy head of King Victor Emanuel. Again the wonderful combination of good luck and bad--the good fortune which brought to the very door of the house of Savoy the sudden realization of its highest dreams--the misfortune which allowed that house no share in the true credit of having accomplished its destiny. What had Victor Emanuel to do with the sudden juncture of events which enabled Italy to take possession of her capital? Nothing whatever. His people have no more reason to thank him for Rome than they have to thank him for the rain or the sunshine, the olive and the vine. The King seems to have felt all this. His short visit to Rome, and the formal act of taking possession, may perhaps have been made so short because Victor Emanuel knew that he had little right to claim any honors or expect any popular enthusiasm. He entered Rome one day and went away the next. I confess, however, that I should not wonder if the visit was made so short merely because the whole thing was a bore to the honest King, and he could only make up his mind to endure a very few hours of it.

Victor Emanuel, King of United Italy, and welcomed by popular acclamation in Rome--his second son almost at the same moment proclaimed King of the Spaniards--his second daughter Queen of Portugal. How fortune seems to have delighted in honoring this house of Savoy. I only say "seems to have." I do not venture yet to regard the accession of King Amadeus to the crown of Spain as necessarily an honorable or a fortunate thing. Every one must wish the poor young prince well in such a situation; perhaps we should rather wish him well out of it. Never king assumed a crown with such ghastly omens to welcome him. Here is the King putting on his diadem; and yonder, lying dead by the hand of an assassin, is the man who gave him the diadem and made him King! But for Juan Prim there would be no Amadeus, King of the Spaniards; and for that reason Juan Prim lies dead. The young King must have needed all his hereditary courage to enable him to face calmly and bravely, as he seems to have done, so terrible a situation. Macaulay justly says that no danger is so trying to the nerves of a brave man as the danger of assassination. Men utterly reckless in battle--like "bonny Dundee" for example--have owned that the knowledge of the assassin's purpose and haunting presence was more than they could endure. The young Italian prince seems to have shown no sign of flinching. So far as anything indeed is known of him, he is favorably known to the world. He bore himself like a brave soldier at Custozza, and obtained the special commendation of the Austrian victor, the gallant old Archduke Albrecht. He married for love a lady of station decidedly inferior to that of a royal prince; the lady had the honor of being sneered at even in her honeymoon for the modest, inexpensive simplicity of her toilet, as she appeared with her young husband at one of the watering-places; he had not made himself before marriage the subject of as much scandal as used to follow and float around the bachelor reputation of his elder brother Humbert. He is believed to be honestly and manfully liberal in his views. He ought to make a good King as kings go--if the murderers of General Prim only give him the chance.