"My Italian people[52] must know me well enough not to forget that
there is more in my little finger than in all their brains put
together."

Alongside of him, they are children, "minors," the French also, and
likewise the rest of mankind. A diplomat, who often saw him and
studied him under all as aspects, sums up his character in one
conclusive phrase:

"He considered himself an isolated being in this world, made to govern
and direct all minds as he pleased."[53]

Hence, whoever has anything to do with him, must abandon his
independence and become his tool of government.

"That terrible man," often exclaimed Decrés[54] "has subjugated us
all! He holds all our imaginations in his hands, now of steel and now
of velvet, but whether one or the other during the day nobody knows,
and there is no way to escape from them whatever they seize on they
never let go!"

Independence of any kind, even eventual and merely possible, puts him
in a bad mood; intellectual or moral superiority is of this order, and
he gradually gets rid of it;[55] toward the end he no longer tolerates
alongside of him any but subject or captive spirits. His principal
servants are machines or fanatics, a devout worshipper, like Maret, a
gendarme, like Savary,[56] ready to do his bidding. From the outset,
he has reduced his ministers to the condition of clerks; for he is
administrator as well as ruler, and in each department he watches
details as closely as the entire mass. Accordingly, he requires