His mind was lost in a maze of metaphysical
speculations; and even these served him merely as some
cunningly-contrived toy with which to trick his leisure.
His revocation of the charter had necessarily separated him from Gamba
and the advanced liberals. He knew that the hunchback, ever scornful of
expediency, charged him with disloyalty to the people; but such charges
could no longer wound. The events following the Duke's birthday had
served to crystallise the schemes of the little liberal group, and they
now formed a campaign of active opposition to the government, attacking
it by means of pamphlets and lampoons, and by such public speaking as
the police allowed. The new professors of the University, ardently in
sympathy with the constitutional movement, used their lectures as means
of political teaching, and the old stronghold of dogma became the centre
of destructive criticism. But as yet these ideas formed but a single
live point in the general numbness.
Two years passed in this way. North of the Alps, all Europe was
convulsed, while Italy was still but a sleeper who tosses in his sleep.
In the two Sicilies, the arrogance and perfidy of the government gave a
few martyrs to the cause, and in Bologna there was a brief revolutionary
outbreak; but for the most part the Italian states were sinking into
inanition. Venice, by recalling her fleet from Greece, let fall the
dominion of the sea. Twenty years earlier Genoa had basely yielded
Corsica to France.
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