Page:Helen Leah Reed - Napoleons young neighbour.djvu/239

Rh However heterodox his views on any subject, Napoleon seldom hesitated to express them, at least to those in whom he had confidence.

"I have no faith whatever in medicine," said Napoleon one day to a very clever medical man who was on the island. "My own remedies are starvation and the warm bath. Churchmen," he added, "are often hypocrites, because too much is expected of them. Politicians must have a conventional conscience, and soldiers are cut-throats and robbers. But surgeons are neither too good nor too bad; their mission is to benefit mankind, and they have opportunities to study human nature as well as science. I have a higher opinion of the surgical profession than of any other. The practice of the law," he concluded, "is too severe for poor human nature, for he who distorts truth and exults at the success of injustice at last will hardly know right from wrong."

Napoleon liked sailors, and often talked with those who conducted fatigue parties around the island.