Cavour at Turin naturally looked upon this widening gap very differently from Garibaldi at Naples. By the beginning of September he realized that he had reached what he himself felt to be the supreme and critical phase of the risorgimento. Appreciative as he was of some of the great things Garibaldi had done for Italy, he was now convinced even more that the man was fundamentally a menace and a nuisance. He had told Nigra that he would not shrink from civil war against the radicals if only he could win public opinion; but his own conduct over Nice and Garibaldi's conduct in Sicily had left him for some months without enough public support, and it was a difficult question how far and how directly and when he could dare to oppose the radicals and yet have public opinion on his side. A decision could not be put off much longer. The more territory Garibaldi won, the greater would be the momentum of the revolutionaries, the larger their army, the more they would be master of the situation, the more difficult to resist them, the more they would be able to speak on terms of equality with Cavour, and the more humiliating it would be for Piedmont and the king. Garibaldi nominally ruled over as large a territory and as many Italians in the south as did Victor Emanuel in the north. There was serious danger that, by comparison with the victorious dictator, the warlike reputation built up with such difficulty by northerners for their king would be lost, and Victor Emanuel would appear to be merely a friend of Garibaldi the kingmaker.