Excerpt from Fenelon: His Friends and His Enemies, 1651-1715
In this endeavour to portray the figure of Francois de Fenelon, Archbishop of Cambrai, it has been my desire to discover and set forth the truth, and not to shroud and overwhelm him with the glories of a perfection to which he did not attain. There is no dimness or uncertainty to obscure his reputation. His name occurs in less or greater prominence in most of the innumerable memoirs and correspondence of the period; but he attained to that unenviable pitch of eminence which makes a character a party question, and the testimonies regarding it are therefore curiously conflicting. It is certain that he was ambitious, but he lacked the cool and wary temper that secures fulfilment of ambition. He was headstrong, and his self-confidence lured him to inconsistency. He could be jealous also, and, even when the passage of the years had purified and tempered many weaknesses, a little spark of malice, lying far below the surface, woke into flame. But though these stains, and others such as these, lie marked and defined upon the pages of his record, it does not cease to be a fair one, and every stage in the advance to closer knowledge of him establishes the conviction of his abiding purity of faith and conduct with greater clearness.
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