"Announce to the King of Holland, that if his ministers have acted on their own responsibility, I will have them arrested and all their heads cut off."
He says to M. de Ségur, member of the Academy commission which had just approved M. de Chateaubriand's discourse:[1279]
"You, and M. de Fontaines, as state councillor and grand master, I ought to put in Vincennes.... Tell the second class of the Institute that I will have no political subjects treated at its meetings.....If it disobeys, I will break it up like a bad club.
Even when not angry or scolding,[1280] when the claws are drawn in, one feels the clutch. He says to Beugnot, whom he has just berated, scandalously and unjustly,—conscious of having done him injustice and with a view to produce an effect on the bystanders,—
"Well, you great imbecile, you have got back your brains?"
On this, Beugnot, tall as a drum-major, bows very low, while the smaller man, raising his hand, seizes him by the ear, "a heady mark of favor," says Beugnot, a sign of familiarity and of returning good humor. And better yet, the master deigns to lecture Beugnot on his personal tastes, on his regrets, on his wish to return to France: What would he like? To be his minister in Paris? "Judging by what he saw of me the other day I should not be there very long; I might die of worry before the end of the month." He has already killed Portalis, Cretet, and almost Treilhard, even though he had led a hard life: he could no longer urinate, nor the others either. The same thing would have happened to Beignot, if not worse....
"Stay here.... after which you will be old, or rather we all shall be old, and I will send you to the Senate to drivel at your ease."
Evidently,[1281] the nearer one is to his person the more disagreeable life becomes.[1282] "Admirably served, promptly obeyed to the minute, he still delights in keeping everybody around him in terror concerning the details of all that goes on in his palace." Has any difficult task been accomplished? He expresses no thanks, never or scarcely ever praises, and, which happens but once, in the case of M. de Champagny, Minister of Foreign Affairs, who is praised for having finished the treaty of Vienna in one night, and with unexpected advantages;[1283] this time, the Emperor has thought aloud, is taken by surprise; "ordinarily, he manifests approbation only by his silence."—When M. de Rémusat, prefect of the palace, has arranged "one of those magnificent fêtes in which all the arts minister to his enjoyment," economically, correctly, with splendor and success, his wife never asks her husband[1284] if the Emperor is satisfied, but whether he has scolded more or less.
"His leading general principle, which he applies in every way, in great things as well as in small ones, is that a man's zeal depends upon his anxiety."
How insupportable the constraint he exercises, with what crushing weight his absolutism bears down on the most tried devotion and on the most pliable characters, with what excess he tramples on and wounds the best dispositions, up to what point he represses and stifles the respiration of the human being, he knows as well as anybody. He was heard to say,