"Napoleon was not irreligious in the ordinary sense of the word. He would not admit that there had ever existed a genuine atheist; he condemned Deism as the result of rash speculation. A Christian and a Catholic, he recognised in religion alone the right to govern human societies. He looked on Christianity as the basis of all real civilisation; and considered Catholicism as the form of worship most favourable to the maintenance of order and the true tranquillity of the moral world; Protestantism as a source of trouble and disagreements. Personally indifferent to religious practices, he respected them too much to permit the slightest ridicule of those who followed them."