His career became a spiral -- sometimes upward, sometimes downward -- of innovation, iconoclasm and a dandified showmanship that would have made him a celebrity in our time.
Behind the icon follow priests and better-dressed people, carrying icons in front of their chest, and an effete, dandified and bored priest in vestments carefully straightens his hair.
He could handle adult company perfectly well, but his dandified aristocratic appearance and dry humour kept most people at bay, apart from a few friends.
Inflaming the scandal was the much-remarked "coolness" of the culprit, whose "utmost calm" and dandified appearance made him an emblem of heartless, fashionable youth.