The Congress which met in Paris in February 1856 for the conclusion of the peace between the Allies and Russia was to have far more momentous results for Italy than for the countries more immediately concerned in its discussions, but, contrary to the general impression, it does not appear that these results were anticipated by Cavour.  He even said that it was idle for Sardinia to send delegates to a congress in which they would be treated like children.  Cavour feared, perhaps, to lose the ground he had gained in the previous year with Napoleon III., when the Emperor’s rather surprising question:  ’Que peut-on faire pour l’Italie?’ had suggested to the Piedmontese statesman that definite scheme of a French alliance, which henceforth he never let go.  In any case, when D’Azeglio, who was appointed Sardinian representative, refused at the last moment to undertake a charge for which he knew he was not fitted, it was only at the urgent request of the King that Cavour consented to take his place.  When once in Paris, however, he warmed to the work, finding an unexpectedly strong ally in Lord Clarendon.  He won what was considered in all Europe a great diplomatic triumph, by getting a special sitting assigned to the examination of Italian affairs, which had as little to do with the natural work of the Congress as the affairs of China.  The chief points discussed at the secret sitting of the 8th of April were the foreign occupations in Central Italy, and the state of the Roman and Neapolitian governments, which was stigmatised by Lord Clarendon in terms much more severe than Cavour himself thought it prudent to use.  Count Buol, the chief Austrian representative, grew very angry, and his opposition was successful in reducing the sitting to a mere conversation; but what had been said had been said, and Cavour prepared the way for his future policy by remarking to everyone:  ’You see that diplomacy can do nothing for us; the question needs another solution.’  Lord Clarendon’s vigorous support made him think for a moment that England might take an active part in that other solution, and with this idea in his mind he hurried over the Channel to see Lord Palmerston, but he left England convinced that nothing more than moral assistance was ever to be expected from that quarter.  The Marquis Emmanuel d’Azeglio, who for many years represented Sardinia, and afterwards Italy, at the Court of St James, has placed it on record that the English Premier repeatedly assured him that an armed intervention on behalf of Italian freedom would have been much to his taste, but that the country would not have been with him.  It is certain that Cavour would have preferred an English to a French alliance; as it was not to be had, he reposed his sole hopes in the Emperor Napoleon, who had not the French people really more with him in this matter than Lord Palmerston had the English—­nay, he had them less with him, for in England there would have been a party of Italian sympathisers favourable to the war, and in France, there was no one except Prince Napoleon and the workmen of Paris.  But the French Emperor was a despotic sovereign, and not the Prime Minister of a self-governing country.  After all, some good may come out of despotism.