Napoleon was a great stickler for appearances, and for this reason loathed the dirtiness and slovenliness of Davoust. Madame Junot, in her amusing “Memoirs,” relates that the Duc d’Auerstadt, having some facial resemblance to Napoleon, was fond of copying him in dress and manners; but she adds that Napoleon himself was very neat. A marshal had no excuse for being untidy. Davoust had been at Brienne with Bonaparte, and had thus a longer experience of his master’s character than any of the other marshals. Had he been wise he would have turned it to account, not only by cultivating the graces, but by giving the emperor that ungrudging, demonstrative loyalty which Napoleon valued above all things, and rewarded by constant favor. But Davoust was a caballer, a grievance-monger, and a _grognard_; and it must have been rather diverting to see him aping the manners of a master at whom he was always carping in holes and corners. On the other hand, it must be said that Davoust proved faithful in the hour of misfortune, and did not rally to the Bourbons till 1818; that is, when all chances of an imperial restoration were gone; moreover, every time he held an important command he did his duty with courage, talent, and fidelity. His affected brusqueness of speech was an unfortunate mannerism, for it made him many enemies, and sometimes exposed him to odd reprisals. The roughness of tongue which was affected in Davoust was natural in Soult. This marshal had an excellent heart, but he could not, for the life of him, refrain from snarling at anybody whom he heard praised. The proverb about bite and bark might have been invented for him, as the men at whom he grumbled most were often those whom he most favored. Soult was born in the same year as Napoleon, 1769, and out-lived all his brother marshals, dying in 1852, when the second empire was already an impending fact. He had been a private soldier under Louis XVI., he passed through every grade in the service, he became prime minister, and when he voluntarily resigned office in 1847, owing to the infirmities of age, Louis Philippe created him marshal-general—a title which had only been borne by three marshals before him, Turenne, Villars, and Maurice de Saxe. But these honors never quite consoled Soult for having failed to become king of Portugal. He could not stomach the luck of his comrade Bernadotte, the son of a weaver, who was wearing the crown of Sweden.