invaded France; and, in spite of the most desperate resistance,
triumphantly entered Paris in March, 1814. Ney was one of the three
marshals chosen by Napoleon to negotiate with Alexander in behalf of the
King of Rome, but the attempt was unsuccessful, and all he could do was
to remain a passive spectator of the fall and exile of his chief.

On the restoration of the Bourbons, Ney was more fortunate than many of
his brethren: he was entrusted with a high military command, and created
a knight of St. Louis, and a peer of France.

But France was now at peace with all the world; and no one of these
great military chiefs could be more unprepared for the change than the
Prince of Moskwa. He was too old to acquire new habits. For domestic
comforts he was little adapted: during the many years of his marriage,
he had been unable to pass more than a very few months with his family.
Too illiterate to find any resource in books, too rude to be a favourite
in society, and too proud to desire that sort of distinction, he was
condemned to a solitary and an inactive life. The habit of braving
death, and of commanding vast bodies of men, had impressed his character
with a species of moral grandeur, which raised him far above the puerile
observances of the fashionable world. Plain in his manners, and still
plainer in his words, he neither knew, nor wished to know, the art of
pleasing courtiers. Of good nature he had indeed a considerable fund,
but he showed it, not so much by the endless little attentions of a
gentleman, as by scattered acts of princely beneficence. For dissipation
he had no taste; his professional cares and duties, which, during
twenty-five years, had left him no respite, had engrossed his attention
too much to allow room for the passions, vices, or follies of society to
obtain any empire over him. The sobriety of his manners was extreme,
even to austerity.