Chancellor Michel Le Tellier founded one of the most important political clans of the French Old Regime. When he died in 1685, he was honored with five funeral orations. The two most famous ones were delivered by Bishops Bossuet and Fléchier who adopted quite opposite views on the sense life, death and posterity should be given with respect to each other. Strangely enough, the stand adopted by Bossuet on the basis of the Catholic creed heralded the French Revolution, while Fléchier’s more moderate and conciliatory tone attempted not to challenge the aristocratic ideal of one’s living on in his children and lineage.