His talents as a card-player, a narrator, an amiable man of the highest breeding, were so well known and appreciated that parties would have seemed a failure if the dainty connoisseur was absent.

Masters of houses and their wives felt the need of his approving grimace.

When a young woman heard the chevalier say at a ball, "You are delightfully well-dressed!" she was more pleased at such praise than she would have been at mortifying a rival.

Monsieur de Valois was the only man who could perfectly pronounce certain phrases of the olden time.
The words, "my heart," "my jewel," "my little pet," "my queen," and the amorous diminutives of 1770, had a grace that was quite irresistible when they came from his lips.

In short, the chevalier had the privilege of superlatives.