Nevertheless, three years later, the Allies were in Paris, and the Senate, convoked and directed by Talleyrand,--to whom the Chancellor Pasquier, qualified by Taine as "the best informed and the most judicious witness for the first half of this century," denies every quality of "the heart or the soul," the superiority of talent with which he is generally credited, and even the sole virtue usually left him by his detractors, that of having skilfully and worthily represented France at the Congress of Vienna,--named a provisional government, on the 1st of April, 1811. On the 3d, it pronounced the end of Napoleon's power; on the 6th, it adopted a new constitution and called to the throne a brother of Louis XVI, who became Louis XVIII. [Illustration: THE FLOWERS. CEILING DECORATION FOR THE GRANDE SALLE DES FÊTES IN THE NEW HOTEL DE VILLE. Painted by Gabriel Ferrier.] The return from Elba, the Chancellor states in his _Mémoires_, so far from being desired by the nation at large, was viewed with terror; and the unpopularity of the government of the Bourbons, after their return to power, he ascribes to the very poor opinion that it caused to be entertained "of its strength and of its capacity." Of its gross violation of law and justice, one of the most striking instances was that of the execution of Marshal Ney, after Waterloo, and the Duc de Richelieu, Louis XVIII's minister of foreign affairs,--whom the latest historical researches seem to combine to elevate, and of whom even Pasquier was an admirer,--here appears in the ignoble _rôle_ of judge and accuser combined. Scarcely was he settled in the Tuileries again when the new king proceeded to draw up a list of eighteen citizens and eighteen superior officers to be proscribed, though in so doing he formally violated the articles of the capitulation of Paris, which provided that no citizen or soldier was to be prosecuted for having taken part in the preceding events. The presidency of the council of war which was to try, and condemn, "the bravest of the brave," was offered to the eldest of the marshals, Moncey, Duc de Conegliano. He declined it, in an indignant letter to the king, as "sanctioning an assassination," and was imprisoned for three months in a fortress for disobedience of orders. By a majority of five votes against two, the council, in fact, declared itself incompetent, and Ney, with a sigh of relief, exclaimed: "You see, _ces b ... là_ would have shot me like a rabbit."