exempt his sub-deacons from military service, to establish and to
defray the expenses of the chapels of his diocese, to provide parishes
with the indispensable priest, with regular services and the
sacraments, requires favors, which favors cannot be enjoyed without an
affectation of obedience and zeal and, more important still, devotion.
Moreover, he is only a human being. If Napoleon has selected him, it
is on account of his intelligence, knowing what he is about, open to
human motives, not too rigid and of too easy conscience; in the eyes
of the master, the first quality is an obedient personality attached
to his system and person.[100] Moreover, with his candidates, he has
always taken into consideration the hold they give him through their
weaknesses, vanity and needs, their ostentatious ways and expenditure,
their love of money, titles and precedence, their ambition, desire for
promotion, enjoyment of credit, and right of obtaining places for
protégés and relations. He avails himself of all these advantages and
finds that they answer his purpose. With the exception of three or
four saints, like Monsignor d'Aviau[101] or Monsignor Dessolles, who
he has inadvertently put into the episcopate, the bishops are content
to be barons, and the archbishops counts. They are glad to rank higher
and higher in the Legion of Honor; they loudly assert, in praise of
the new order of things, the honors and dignities it confers on these
or those prelates who have become members of the legislative corps or
been made senators.[102] Many of them receive secret pay for secret
services, pecuniary incentives in the shape of this or that amount in
ready money. In sum, Napoleon has judged accurately; with hesitation
and remorse, nearly the whole of his episcopal staff, Italian and
French, 66 prelates out of 80, are open to "temporal influences". They
yield to seductions and threats; they accept or submit, even in
spiritual matters, to his positive ascendancy.[103]