o him; he had no taste for and
no comprehension of any but a concentrated government; he found it
convenient to deal with but one man, a prefect of the spiritual order,
as pliable as his colleague of the temporal order, a mitered grand
functionary--such was the bishop in his eyes. This is the reason why
he did not oblige him to surround himself with constitutional and
moderating authorities; he did not restore the ancient bishop's court
and the ancient chapter; he allowed his prelates themselves to pen the
new diocesan statute.--Naturally, in the division of powers, the bishop
reserved the best part to himself, the entire substance, and, to limit
his local omnipotence, there remained simply lay authority. But, in
practice, the shackles by which the civil government kept him in its
dependence, broke or became relaxed one by one. Among the Organic
Articles, almost all of them which subjected or repressed the bishop
fell into discredit or into desuetude. Meanwhile, those which authorized
and exalted the bishop remained in vigor and maintained their effect.
Consequently, Napoleon's calculation, in relation to the bishop or in
relation to the Pope, proved erroneous. He wanted to unite in one person
two incompatible characters, to convert the dignitaries of the Church
into dignitaries of the State, to make functionaries out of potentates.
The functionary insensibly disappeared; the potentate alone subsisted
and still subsists.

At the present day, conformably to the statute of 1802, the cathedral
chapter,[5233] except in case of one interim, is a lifeless and
still-born body, a vain simulachre; it is always, by title or on paper,
the Catholic "senate," the bishop's obligatory "council";[5234] but he
takes his councillors where he pleases, outside of the chapter, if that
suits him, and he is free not to take any of them, "to govern alone, to
do all himself." It is he who appoints to all offices, to the five or
six hundred offices of his diocese; he is the universal collator of
these and, nine times out of ten, the sole collator; excepting eight or
nine canonships and the thirty or forty cantonal curacies, which the
government must approve, he alone makes appointments and without any
person's concurrence. Thus, in the way of favors, his clerical body has
nothing to expect from anybody but himself.--And, on the other hand,
they no longer enjoy any protection against his harshness; the hand
which punishes is still less restrained