For the rest, he had one trait in common with Henry IV., he cheated; but when the game was over he left all the gold and notes he had won on the table, saying: "You are ninnies! I have cheated all the time we've been playing, and you never found out.

Those who lost can take their money back." Born and bred in the Catholic faith, Bonaparte had no preference for any dogma.

When he re-established divine worship it was done as a political act, not as a religious one.

He was fond, however, of discussions bearing on the subject; but he defined his own part in advance by saying: "My reason makes me a disbeliever in many things; but the impressions of my childhood and the inspirations of my early youth have flung me back into uncertainty." Nevertheless he would never hear of materialism; he cared little what the dogma was, provided that dogma recognized a Creator.

One beautiful evening in Messidor, on board his vessel, as it glided along between the twofold azure of the sky and sea, certain mathematicians declared there was no God, only animated matter.