Doubt, laughter, astonishment, and disgust
followed each other through the minds of millions of men. If curses
could kill, the man who had escaped the bombs of Orsini and the bullets
of the Austrians would certainly have died in the month that followed
the interview he had flogged his imperial brother into granting him. In
America,--where we are always doing so much (on paper) for the cause of
freedom, and for the deliverance of "oppressed nationalities" of the
proper degrees and shades of whiteness, in the firm conviction that the
free man is the better customer,--in America the reaction of opinion was
overwhelming; and there were but few persons in the United States who
would not have shouted over news that Henri Cinq was in Paris, and that
the French Empire had a third time made way for the Kingdom of France.
Time has not altogether removed the impression then created; for, if it
has not justified the belief that the French Emperor had abandoned
the Italian cause, it has convinced the world that he lost a noble
opportunity to effect the destruction of Austria.
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