The Critic. "Say rather that he practised its forms with parade and ostentation: witness the inordinate ambition with which he always claimed honors in the Church, to which he had no right; outrageously affronted intendants, who opposed his pretensions; required priests to address him when preaching, and in their intercourse with him demanded from them humiliations which he did not exact from the meanest military officer. This was his way of making himself great in religion and piety, or, more truly, in vanity and hypocrisy. How can a man be called great in religion, when he openly holds opinions entirely opposed to the True Faith, such as, that all men are predestined, that Hell will not last for ever, and the like?" The Orator. "His very look inspired esteem and confidence,--" The Critic. "Then one must have taken him at exactly the right moment, and not when he was foaming at the mouth with rage." The Orator. "A mingled air of nobility and gentleness; a countenance that bespoke the probity that appeared in all his acts, and a sincerity that could not dissimulate,--" The Critic. "The eulogist did not know the old fox." The Orator. "An inviolable fidelity to friends,--" The Critic. "What friends? Was it persons of the other sex? Of these he was always fond, and too much for the honor of some of them." The Orator. "Disinterested for himself, ardent for others, he used his credit at court only to recommend their services, excuse their faults, and obtain favors for them,--" The Critic. "True; but it was for his creatures and for nobody else." The Orator. "I pass in silence that reading of spiritual books which he practised as an indispensable duty more than forty years; that holy avidity with which he listened to the word of God,--" The Critic. "Only if the preacher addressed the sermon to him, and called him Monseigneur. As for his reading, it was often Jansenist books, of which he had a great many, and which he greatly praised and lent freely to others." The Orator. "He prepared for the sacraments by meditation and retreat,--" The Critic. "And generally came out of his retreat more excited than ever against the Church." The Orator. "Let us not recall his ancient and noble descent, his family connected with all that is greatest in the army, the magistracy, and the government; Knights, Marshals of France, Governors of Provinces, Judges, Councillors, and Ministers of State: let us not, I say, recall all these without remembering that their examples roused this generous heart to noble emulation; and, as an expiring flame grows brighter as it dies, so did all the virtues of his race unite at last in him to end with glory a long line of great men, that shall be no more except in history." The Critic. "Well laid on, and too well for his hearers to believe him. Far from agreeing that all these virtues were collected in the person of his pretended hero, they would find it very hard to admit that he had even one of them." [7]