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inquired his profession, and then turned the conversation upon some topic connected with it. I have often heard wonder expressed at the extent of Napoleon's information, on matters of which he would hardly have been expected to know much. On this occasion, a very clever medical man, after a long conversation with the emperor on the subject of his profession, declared his astonishment to my father at the knowledge he possessed, and the clearness and brilliancy with which he reasoned on it, though his theories were sometimes rather heterodox. Napoleon told him he had no faith whatever in medicine, and that his own remedies were starvation and the warm bath. At the same time he professed a higher opinion of the medical, or rather surgical profession, than of any other. The practice of the law, he said, was too severe an ordeal for poor human nature, adding, that he who habituates himself to the distortion of truth, and to exultation at