e 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.[51100] 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 proteges 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[51101] 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.[51102] 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.[51103]

Moreover, among these dignitaries, nearly all of whom are blameless, or,
at least, who behave well and are generally honorable, Napoleon[51104]
finds a few whose servility is perfect, unscrupulous individuals ready
for anything that an absolute prince could desire, like Bishops Bernier
and De Pancemont, one accepting a reward of 30,000 francs and the other
the sum of 50,000 francs[51105] for the vile part they have played in
the negotiations for the Concordat; a miserly, brutal cynic like Maury,
archbishop of Paris, or an intriguing, mercenary skeptic like De Pradt,
archbishop of Malines; or an old imbecile, falling on his knees before
the civil power, like Rousseau, bishop of Orleans, who writes a pastoral
letter declaring that the Pope is as free in his Savona prison as on his
throne at Rome. After 1806,[51106] Napoleon, that he may control men
of greater suppleness, prefers to take his prelates from old noble
families-