Heart (de Amicis)/Count Cavour
COUNT CAVOUR
Wednesday, 29th.
You are to write a description of the monument to Count Cavour. You can do it. But who was Count Cavour? You cannot understand at present. For the present this is all you know: he was for many years the prime minister of Piedmont. It was he who sent the Piedmontese army to the Crimea to raise once more, with the victory of the Cernaia, our military glory, which had fallen with the defeat at Novara; it was he who made one hundred and fifty thousand Frenchmen descend from the Alps to chase the Austrians from Lombardy; it was he who governed Italy in the most solemn period of our revolution; who gave, during those years, the most potent impulse to the holy enterprise of the unification of our country, he with his brilliant mind, with his invincible perseverance, with his more than human industry.
Many generals have passed terrible hours on the field of battle; but he passed more terrible ones in his cabinet, when his enormous work might suffer destruction at any moment, like a fragile edifice at the tremor of an earthquake. Hours, nights of struggle and anguish did he pass, sufficient to make him issue from it with reason deranged and death in his heart. And it was this gigantic and stormy work which shortened his life by twenty years. Nevertheless, devoured by the fever which was to cast him into his grave, he yet contended desperately with the malady in order to accomplish something for his country. “It is strange,” he said sadly on his death-bed, “I no longer know how to read; I cannot read.”
While they were bleeding him, and the fever was increasing, he was thinking of his country, and he said imperiously: “Cure me; my mind is clouding over; I have need of all my faculties to manage important affairs.” During his last moments, when the whole city was in a tumult, and the king stood at his bedside, he said anxiously, “I have many things to say to you, Sire, many things to show you; but I am ill; I cannot, I cannot;” and he was in despair.
His feverish thoughts hovered ever round the State, round the new Italian provinces which had been united with us, round the many things which still remained to be done. While the delirium seized him, “Educate the children!” he exclaimed, between his gasps for breath,—educate the children and the young people—govern with liberty!
His delirium increased; death hovered over him. And with burning words he invoked General Garibaldi, with whom he had had disagreements, and Venice and Rome, which were not yet free: he had vast visions of the future of Italy and of Europe; he dreamed of a foreign invasion; he inquired where the corps of the army were, and the generals; he still trembled for us, for his people. His great sorrow was not, you understand, that he felt that his life was going, but to see himself fleeing his country, which still had need of him, and for which he had, in a few years, worn out the measureless forces of his wonderful constitution. He died with the battle-cry in his throat, and his death was as great as his life.
Now reflect a little, Enrico, what sort of a thing is our labor, which nevertheless so weighs us down; what are our griefs, our death itself, in the face of the toils, the terrible anxieties, the tremendous agonies of these men upon whose hearts rests a world! Think of this, my son, when you pass before that marble image, and say, “Glory!” in your heart.
Your Father.