It combined everything, and there was no conflict of opposites in it.

There were gravity and gallantry, the serious and the gay; it savored equally of the learned doctor, the bishop, and the great lord; that which appeared on its surface, as well as in his whole person, was refinement, intellect, grace, propriety, and, above all, nobility.
It required an effort to cease looking at him.

His manners corresponded therewith in the same proportion, with an ease which communicated it to others; with all this, a man who never desired to show more wits than they with whom he conversed, who put himself within everybody's range without ever letting it be perceived, in such wise that nobody could drop him, or fight shy of him, or not want to see him again.

It was this rare talent, which he possessed to the highest degree, that kept his friends so completely attached to him all his life, in spite of his downfall, and that, in their dispersion, brought them together to speak of him, to sorrow after him, to yearn for him, to bind themselves more and more to him, as the Jews to Jerusalem, and to sigh after his return and hope continually for it, just as that unfortunate people still expects and sighs after the Messiah." Those faithful friends were dropping one after another.

The death of the Duke of Burgundy and of the Duke of Chevreuse in 1712, and that of the Duke of Beauvilliers in 1714, were a fatal blow to the affections as well as to the ambitious hopes of Fenelon.