They feel that they are not only tolerated, but protected by it, and they are grateful.[5131] The people recover their churches, their cures, the forms of worship to which they are almost instinctively accustomed, the ceremonial which, to their imagination, belongs to every important act of their lives, the solemn rites of marriage, baptism, burial, and other sacramental offices .-- Henceforth mass is said every Sunday in each village, and the peasants enjoy their processions on Corpus-Christi day, when their crops are blessed.

A great public want is satisfied.
Discontent subsides, ill-will dies out, the government has fewer enemies; its enemies, again, lose their best weapon, and, at the same time, it acquires an admirable one, the right of appointing bishops and of sanctioning the cures.

By virtue of the Concordat and by order of the Pope, not only, in 1801, do all former spiritual authorities cease to exist, but again, after 1801, all new titularies, with the Pope's assent, chosen, accepted, managed, disciplined,[5132] and paid by the First Consul, are, in fact, his creatures, and become his functionaries.
IV.

The Pope, Napoleon's employee.
Other services expected of the Pope .-- Coronation of Napoleon at Notre-Dame .-- Napoleonic theory of the Empire and the Holy See .-- The Pope a feudatory and subject of the Emperor.
-- The pope installed as a functionary at Paris, and arch-chancellor on spiritual matters .-- Effect of this for Italy.
Over and above this positive and real service obtained from the sovereign pontiff, he awaits others yet more important and undefined, and principally his future coronation in Notre Dame.

Already, during the negotiations for the Concordat, La Fayette had observed to him with a smile:[5133] "You want the holy oil dropped on your head"; to which he made no contradictory answer.