"He became," says Metternich, "a great legislator and administrator, as he became a great soldier, by following out his instincts. The turn of his mind always led him toward the positive. He disliked vague ideas, and hated equally the dreams of visionaries and the abstractions of idealists. He treated as nonsense everything that was not clearly and practically presented to him. He valued only those sciences which can be verified by the senses, or which rest on experience and observation. He had the greatest contempt for the false philosophy and false philanthropy of the eighteenth century. Among its teachers, Voltaire was the special object of his aversion. As a Catholic, he recognized in religion alone the right to govern human societies. Personally indifferent to religious practices, he respected them too much to permit the slightest ridicule of those who followed them; and yet religion with him was the result of an enlightened policy rather than an affair of sentiment. He was persuaded that no man called to public life could be guided by any other motive than that of interest. "He was gifted with a particular tact in recognizing those men who could be useful to him. He had a profound knowledge of the national character of the French. In history he guessed more than he knew. As he always made use of the same quotations, he must have drawn from a few books, especially abridgments. His heroes were Alexander, Caesar, and Charlemagne. He laid great stress on aristocratic birth and the antiquity of his own family. He had no other regard for men than a foreman in a manufactory feels for his work-people. In private, without being amiable, he was good-natured. His sisters got from him all they wanted. Simple and easy in private life, he showed himself to little advantage in the great world. Nothing could be more awkward than he in a drawing-room. He would have made great sacrifices to have added three inches to his height. He walked on tiptoe. His costumes were studied to form a contrast with the circle which surrounded him, by extreme simplicity or extreme elegance. Talma taught him attitudes. "Having but one passion,--that of power,--he never lost either his time or his means in those objects which deviated from his aims. Master of himself, he soon became master of events. In whatever period he had appeared, he would have played a prominent part. His prodigious successes blinded him; but up to 1812 he never lost sight of the profound calculations by which he so often conquered. He never recoiled from fear of the wounds he might cause. As a war-chariot crushes everything it meets on its way, he thought of nothing but to advance. He could sympathize with family troubles; he was indifferent to political calamities.