He does nothing to win them over.

His court is not, like the old court, a conversational ball-room, but a hall of inspection, the most sumptuous apartment in his vast barracks; the civil parade is a continuation of the military parade; one finds one's self constrained, stiff, mute and uncomfortable.[3140] He does not know how to entertain as the head of his household, how to welcome guests and be gracious or even polite to his pretended courtiers; he himself declares that[3141] "they go two years without speaking to him, and six months without seeing him; he does not like them, their conversation displeases him." When he addresses them it is to browbeat them; his familiarities with their wives are those of the gendarme or the pedagogue, while the little attentions he inflicts upon them are indecorous criticisms or compliments in bad taste.

They know that they are spied upon in their own homes and responsible for whatever is said there; "the upper police is constantly hovering over all drawing-rooms."[3142] For every word uttered in privacy, for any lack of compliance, every individual, man or woman, runs the risk of exile or of being relegated to the interior at a distance of forty leagues.[3143] And the same with the resident gentry in the provinces; they are obliged to pay court to the prefect, to be on good terms with him, or at least attend his receptions; it is important that their cards should be seen on his mantel piece.[3144] Otherwise, let them take heed, for it is he who reports on their conduct to the minister Fouche or to Savary who replaced him.

In vain do they live circumspectly and confine themselves to a private life; a refusal to accept an office is unpardonable; there is a grudge against them if they do not employ their local influence in behalf of the reign.[3145] Accordingly, they are, under the empire as under the republic, in law as in fact, in the provinces as well as at Paris, privileged persons the wrong way, a suspicious class under a special surveillance" and subject to exceptional rigor.[3146] In 1808,[3147] Napoleon orders Fouche "to draw up ...

among the old and wealthy families who are not in the system...