He was very fond of
talking of religion. In 1806, he conversed with Fournier, bishop of
Montpelier, on matters of theology. There were two points on which
they could not agree, viz., that of hell, and that of salvation out
of the pale of the church. The Emperor told Josephine, that he disputed
like a devil on these two points, on which the bishop was inexorable.
To the philosophers he readily yielded all that was proved against
religion as the work of men and time; but he would not hear of
materialism. One fine night, on deck, amid a clatter of materialism,
Bonaparte pointed to the stars, and said, "You may talk as long as you
please, gentlemen, but who made all that?" He delighted in the
conversation of men of science, particularly of Monge and Berthollet;
but the men of letters he slighted; "they were manufacturers of
phrases." Of medicine, too, he was fond of talking, and with those of
its practitioners whom he most esteemed,-with Corvisart at Paris, and
with Antonomarchi at St. Helena. "Believe me, "he said to the last,
"we had better leave off all these remedies: life is a fortress which
neither you nor I know anything about.
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