Now that for the moment I am out of the stream of public life, and the uncertain state of my health does not even allow me to follow any consecutive study, I have in my solitude for a time turned my thoughts to myself, or rather to those events of the recent past in which I played a part or stood as witness.

Just as we learned of the end of this dangerous quarrel, the Cabinet, which had thus seen a happy ending to the two external problems that menaced the peace of the world, the Piedmontese and Hungarian wars, was itself about to fall.