Melchior de Polignac

At the appropriate time, he passed to the Collège de Harcourt, where thanks to the misdirected efforts of a teacher who was an enthusiast for Aristotle, Polignac adopted the opposite view and became a Cartesian.

He was either prescient, or aware of discussion around Louis XIV which led in two years to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) and the removal of the Huguenot "high places".

He was still in Rome when Alexander VIII died after less than sixteen months on the throne, and was again Conclavist of Cardinal de Bouillon in the Conclave of 1691 that elected Innocent XII (Pignatelli).

In 1709 he was sent along with Nicholas du Blé, Maréchal d'Huxelles, as plenipotentiaries to conduct negotiations toward peace at the Dutch town of Geertruidenberg, but thanks to the obstinacy of Louis XIV, they were unsuccessful.

… In other respects he was wholly occupied with his own ambition, without friendship, without gratitude, without any feeling except for himself; false, lax, indifferent to the means of success; without restraint from God or man, but always with a cloak of delicacy which gave him dupes; above all, a libertine, more from facility, coquetry, ambition, than from natural debauchery; so that while the heart was false and the soul not upright, his judgment was nil, his actions erroneous, his mind inaccurate, which, in spite of the most gracious and deceptive exterior, caused the failure in his hands of every enterprise intrusted to him.

"With a face and talents so fitted to impress others, he was aided by his birth, to which, however, his property did not respond; but that fact dispelled all envy and conciliated favour and good will.

The most amiable ladies of the Court, those even of advanced age, the men most distinguished for place or reputation, the persons of both sexes who chiefly set the tone,—he won them all.

He was on all the Marly trips, end every one was eager to enjoy his charms; he had them for all sorts of conditions, persons, and minds...." On 26 May 1704 Abbé de Polignac was elected to the Académie Française, to the seat once held by Bossuet.

He left unfinished a refutation of Lucretius, written in Latin verse,[8] mostly during his first exile, and published after his death by the abbé de Rothelin (Anti-Lucretius, 1745).

On 17 May 1706 he showed his favor by naming Polignac an Auditor of the Rota (one of the Church's highest courts), a post made vacant by the promotion of Msgr.

At the time Polignac was a negotiator residing in a Protestant country, and it was deemed inadvisable to disrupt the course of events or cause offense by making his elevation public.

He did not attend the Conclave of April–May 1721, which elected Innocent XIII (de' Conti), having been forbidden to travel to Rome by the French Regent, Philippe d' Orleans.

[15] The Duke was so highly impressed by the report, both in content and style, that he had the King name Polignac French Chargé d'affaires to the Holy See, a post he held until 1732.