Where there is esprit there is the I—and “the I, which has to be renounced, is not a nothingness or phantom in the air; it is our intellect which thinks, it is our will which does as it wishes out of self-love.”⁶⁶⁰ Esprit is split into two breaths and two rival lights: one immediately blows out the candle of the other. “Reasoners, scholars without faith, extinguish their inner spirit as the wind blows out the candle.”⁶⁶¹ “I have always observed that your respect for the spirit is rooted in your heart and you do not let it go. Yet this is precisely what the spirit of grace most often extinguishes when allowed to act freely.”⁶⁶² One single image dominated Fénelon’s conduct: water, a feminine water, which has no form itself but takes every form, always transparent, with no flavor. As archbishop, he was the water that flowed through the crevices of Versailles. Saint-Simon, who could study physiognomies in the same way that Fénelon discerned spirits, saw his face as a mobile and liquid surface: “This prelate was a tall, thin man, a fine figure, pale, with a large nose, and eyes from which fire and spirit flowed like a torrent, and of such a physiognomy that I have never seen the like, and which couldn’t be forgotten, even when seen only once. It gathered everything within it, and its contrasts did not clash. It had gravity and gallantry, seriousness and gaiety; in it one perceived the doctor, the bishop, the great lord; uppermost, as in his whole person, was refinement, spirit, grace, decorum and above all nobility.” It is no surprise that this exterminator of esprit had such an abundance of it, even if he was “a man who never wished to have more spirit than those to whom he spoke.”⁶⁶³ This indeed was his art of dissimulation: enemy of “all the extremes, even in goodness,” since they “bring with them refined affectation,” he displayed so much esprit in order to appear more mediocre, more akin to the ordinary courtier, who was ever desperate for esprit.⁶⁶⁴ His worldly perfection, before which Saint-Simon bowed, had become for Fénelon a vehicle that made it possible to transmit, intact and unrecognized, that nameless and formless “foundation” for everything, which intelligence and delicacy were constantly dissipating. “Nothing can match the courtesy, wisdom, pleasantness with which he received everyone.”⁶⁶⁵ But this immaculate hospitality was the context for a work of vast destruction: “Be a true nothing in everything and everywhere; but nothing need be added to this nothing.⁶⁶⁶ On nothing there is no hold. And nothing to lose. The true nothing never resists, because it doesn’t have an I that looks after it.” Saint-Simon observes that it is “incredible to what extent [Fénelon] became the idol of military men.”⁶⁶⁷