moment before by the longinquity of his release."
He lived fifteen years longer, occupied, during the interval of rest
which the Peace of the Church restored to Port-Royal, in directing and
fortifying souls.  He published, one after another, the volumes of his
translation of the Bible, with expositions (_eclaircissements_) which had
been required by the examiners.  In 1679 the renewal of the king's
severities compelled him to retire completely to Pomponne.  On the 3d of
January, 1684, at seventy-one years of age, he felt ill and went to bed;
he died next day, without being taken by surprise, as regarded either his
affairs or his soul, by so speedy an end.  "O blessed flames of
purgatory!" he said, as he breathed his last.  He had requested to be
buried at Port-Royal des Champs; he was borne thither at night; the cold
was intense, and the roads were covered with snow; the carriages were
escorted by men carrying torches.  The nuns looked a moment upon the face
of the saintly director, whom they had not seen for so many years; and
then he was lowered into his grave.  "Needs hide in earth what is but
earth," said Mother Angelica de St. Jean, in deep accents and a lowly
voice, "and return to nothingness what in itself is but nothing."  She
was, nevertheless, heart-broken, and tarried only for this pious duty to
pass away in her turn.  "It is time to give up my veil to him from whom I
received it," said she.  A fortnight after the death of M. de Saci, she
expired at Port-Royal, just preceding to the tomb her brother M. de
Luzancy, who breathed his last at Pomponne, where he had lived with M. de
Saci.  "I confess," said the inconsolable Fontaine, "that when I saw this
brother and sister stricken with death by that of M. de Saci, I blushed--
I who thought I had always loved him--not to follow him like them; and I
became, consequently, exasperated with myself for loving so little in
comparison with those persons, whose love had been strong as death."  The
human heart avenges itself for the tortures men pretentiously inflict
upon it: the disciples of St. Cyran thought to stifle in their souls all
earthly affections, and they died of grief on losing those they loved.
"Their life ebbed away in those depths of tears," as M. Vinet has said.


[Illustration: Abbey of Port-Royal----580]

The great Port-Royal was dead with M. de Saci and Mother Angelica de St.
Jean, faithful and modest imitators of their illustrious predecessors.
The austere virtue and the pious severance from the world existed still
in the house in the Fields, under the direction of Duguet; the
persecution too continued, persistent and noiseless; the king had given
the direction of his conscience to the Jesuits; from Father La Chaise,
moderate and prudent, he had passed to Father Letellier, violent and
perfidious; furthermore, the long persistence of the Jansenists in their
obstinacy, their freedom of thought which infringed the unity so dear to
Louis XIV., displeased the monarch, absolute even in his hour of
humiliation and defeat.  The property of Port-Royal was seized, and
Cardinal de Noailles, well disposed at bottom towards the Jansenists, but
so feeble in character that determination, disgusted him as if it were a
personal insult, ended by once more forbidding the nuns the sacraments;
the house in the Fields was surpressed, and its title merged in that of
Port-Royal in Paris, for some time past replenished with submissive nuns.
Madame de Chateau-Renaud, "the new abbess, went to take possession; the
daughters of Mother Angelica protested, but without violence, as she
would have done in their place."  On the 29th of October, 1709, after
prime, Father Letellier having told the king that Madame de Chateau-
Renaud dared not to go to Port-Royal des Champs, being convinced that
those headstrong, disobedient, and rebellious daughters would laugh at
the king's decree, and that, unless his Majesty would be pleased to give
precise orders to disperse them, it would never be possible to carry it
out, the king, being pressed in this way, sent his orders to
M. d'Argenson, lieutenant of police."

[Illustration: Reading the Decree  581]

He appeared at Port-Royal with a commissary and two exons.  He asked for
the prioress; she was at church: when service was over, he summoned all
the nuns; one, old and very paralytic, was missing.  "Let her be
brought," said M. d'Argenson.  "His Majesty's orders are," he continued,
"that you break up this assemblage, never to meet again.  It is your
general dispersal that I announce to you; you are allowed but three hours
to break up."  "We are ready to obey, sir," said the mother-prioress;
"half an hour is more than sufficient for us to say our last good by, and
take with us a breviary, a Bible, and our regulations."  And when he
asked her whither she meant to go, "Sir, the moment our community is
broken up and dispersed, it is indifferent to me in what place I may be
personally, since I hope to find God wherever I shall be."  They got into
carriages, receiving one after another the farewell and blessing of the
mother-prioress, who was the last to depart, remaining firm to the end
there were two and twenty, the youngest fifty years old; they all died in
the convents to which they were taken.  A seizure was at once made of all
papers and books left in the cells; Cardinal Noailles did not interfere.
M. de St. Cyran had depicted him by anticipation, when he said that the
weak were more to be feared than the wicked.  He was complaining one day
of his differences with his bishops.  "What can you expect, Monsignor?"
laughingly said a lady well disposed to the Jansenists; "God is just; it
is the stones of Port-Royal tumbling upon your head."  The tombs were
destroyed; some coffins were carried to a distance, others left and
profaned; the plough passed over the ruins; the hatred of the enemies of
Port-Royal was satiated.  A few of the faithful, preserving in their
hearts the ardent faith of M. de St. Cyran, narrowed, however, and
absorbed by obstinate resistance, a few theologians dying in exile, and
leaving in Holland a succession of bishops detached from the Roman
church,--this was all that remained of one of the noblest attempts ever
made by the human soul to rise, here below, above that which is permitted
by human nature.  Virtues of the utmost force, Christianity zealously
pushed to its extremest limits, and the most invincible courage,
sustained the Jansenists in a conscientious struggle against spiritual
oppression; its life died out, little by little, amongst the dispersed
members.  The Catholic church suffered therefrom in its innermost
sanctuary.  "The Catholic religion would only be more neglected if there
were no more religionists," said Vauban, in his Memoire in favor of the
Protestants.  It was the same as regarded the Jansenists.  The Jesuits
and Louis XIV., in their ignorant passion, for unity and uniformity, had
not comprehended that great principle of healthy freedom and sound
justice of which the scientific soldier had a glimmering.

The insurrection of the Camisards, in the Cevennes, had been entirely of
a popular character; the Jansenists had penitents amongst the great of
this world, though none properly belonged to them or retired to their
convents or their solitudes; it was the great French burgessdom, issue
for the most part of the magistracy, which supplied their most fervent
associates.  Fenelon and Madame Guyon founded their little church at
court and amongst the great lords; and many remained faithful to them
till death.  The spiritual letters of Fenelon, models of wisdom, pious
tact, moderation, and knowledge of the human heart, are nearly all
addressed to persons engaged in the life and the offices of the court,
exposed to all the temptations of the world.  It is no longer the desert
of the penitents of PortRoyal, or the strict cloister of Mother Angelica;
Fenelon is for only inward restrictions and an abstention purely
spiritual; from afar and in his retreat at Cambrai, he watches over his
faithful flock with a tender pre-occupation which does not make him
overlook the duties of their position.  "Take as penance for your sins,"
he wrote, "the disagreeable liabilities of the position you are in: the
very hinderances which seem injurious to our advancement in piety turn to
our profit, provided that we do what depends on ourselves.  Fail not in
any of your duties towards the court, as regards your office and the
proprieties, but be not anxious for posts which awaken ambition."  Such
are, with their discreet tolerance, the teachings of Fenelon, adapted for
the guidance of the Dukes of Beauvilliers and Chevreuse, and of the Duke
of Burgundy himself.  He went much further, and on less safe a road, when
he was living at court, under the influence of Madame Guyon.  A widow and
still young, gifted with an ardent spirit and a lofty and subtile mind,
Madame Guyon had imagined, in her mystical enthusiasm, a theory of pure
love, very analogous fundamentally, if not in its practical consequences,
to the doctrines taught shortly before by a Spanish priest named Molinos,
condemned by the court of Rome in 1687.  It was about the same time that
Madame Guyon went to Paris, with her book on the _Moyen court et facile
de faire l'Oraison du Coeur_ (Short and easy Method of making Orison with
the Heart).  Prayer, according to this wholly mystical teaching, loses
the character of supplication or intercession, to become the simple
silence of a soul absorbed in God.  "Why are not simple folks so taught?"
she said.  "Shepherds keeping their flocks would have the spirit of the
old anchorites; and laborers, whilst driving the plough, would talk
happily with God: all vice would be banished in a little while, and the
kingdom of God would be realized on earth."

It was a far cry from the sanguinary struggle against sin and the armed
Christianity of the Jansenists; the sublime and specious visions of
Madame Guy on fascinated lofty and gentle souls: the Duchess of Charost,
daughter of Fouquet, Mesdames de Beauvilliers, de Chevreuse, de
Mortemart, daughters of Colbert, and their pious husbands, were the first
to be chained to her feet.  Fenelon, at that time, preceptor to the
children of France (royal family), saw her, admired her, and became
imbued with her doctrines.  She was for a while admitted to the intimacy
of Madame de Maintenon.  It was for this little nucleus of faithful
friends that she wrote her book of _Torrents_.  The human soul is a
torrent which returns to its source, in God, who lives in perfect repose,
and who would fain give it to those who are His.  The Christian soul has
nothing more that is its, neither will nor desire.  It has God for soul;
He is its principle of life."  In this way there is nothing
extraordinary.  No visions, no ecstasies, no entrancements.  The way is
simple, pure, and plain; there the soul sees nothing but in God, as God
sees Himself and with His eyes."  With less vagueness, and quite as
mystically, Fenelon defined the sublime love taught by Madame Guyon in
the following maxim, afterwards condemned at Rome: "There is an habitual
state of love of God which is pure charity, without any taint of the
motive of self-interest.  Neither fear of punishment nor desire of reward
have any longer part in this love; God is loved not for the merit, or the
perfection, or the happiness to be found in loving Him."  What singular
seductiveness in those theories of pure love which were taught at the
court of Louis XIV., by his grandchildren's preceptor, at a woman's
instigation, and zealously preached fifty years afterwards by President
(of New Jersey College) Jonathan Edwards, in the cold and austere
atmosphere of New England!

Led away by the generous enthusiasm of his soul, Fenelon had not probed
the dangers of his new doctrine.  The gospel and church of Christ, whilst
preaching the love of God, had strongly maintained the fact of human
individuality and responsibility.  The theory of mere (pure) love
absorbing the soul in God put an end to repentance, effort to withstand
evil, and the need of a Redeemer.  Bossuet was not deceived.  The
elevation of his mind, combined with strong common sense, caused him to
see through all the veils of the mysticism.  Madame Guyon had submitted
her books to him; he disapproved of them, at first quietly, then
formally, after a thorough examination in conjunction with two other
doctors.  Madame Guyon retired to a monastery of Meaux; she soon returned
to Paris, and her believers rallied round her.  Bossuet, in his anger, no
longer held his hand.  Madame Guyon was shut up first at Vincennes, and
then in the Bastille; she remained seven years in prison, and ended by
retiring to near Blois, where she died in 1717, still absorbed in her
holy and vague reveries, praying no more inasmuch as she possessed God,
"a submissive daughter, however, of the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman
Church, having and desiring to admit no other opinion but its," as she
says in her will.  Bourdaloue calls mere (pure) love "a bare faith, which
has for its object no verity of the gospel's, no mystery of Jesus
Christ's, no attribute of God's, nothing whatever, unless it be, in a
word, God."  In the presence of death, on the approach of the awful
realities of eternity, Madame Guyon no doubt felt the want of a more
simple faith in the mighty and living God.  Fenelon had not waited so
long to surrender.

The instinct of the pious and vigorous souls of the seventeenth century
had not allowed them to go astray: there was little talk of pantheism,
which had spread considerably in the sixteenth century; but there had
been a presentiment of the dangers lurking behind the doctrines of Madame
Guyon.  Bossuet, that great and noble type of the finest period of the
Catholic church in France, made the mistake of pushing his victory too
far.  Fenelon, a young priest when the great Bishop of Meaux was already
in his zenith, had preserved towards him a profound affection and a deep
respect.  "We are, by anticipation, agreed, however you may decide," he
wrote to him on the 28th of July, 1694: "it will be no specious
submission, but a sincere conviction.  Though that which I suppose myself
to have read should appear to me clearer than that two and two make four,
I should consider it still less clear than my obligation to mistrust all
my lights, and to prefer before them those of a bishop such as you.  You
have only to give me my lesson in writing; provided that you wrote me
precisely what is the doctrine of the church, and what are the articles
in which I have slipped, I would tie myself down inviolably to that
rule."  Bossuet required more; he wanted Fenelon, recently promoted to
the Archbishopric of Cambrai, to approve of the book he was preparing on
_Etats d'Oraison_ (States of Orison), and explicitly to condemn the works
of Madame Guyon.  Fenelon refused with generous indignation.  "So it is
to secure my own reputation," he writes to Madame de Maintenon, in 1696,
"that I am wanted to subscribe that a lady, my friend, would plainly
deserve to be burned with all her writings, for an execrable form of
spirituality, which is the only bond of our friendship?  I tell you,
madame, I would burn my friend with my own hands, and I would burn myself
joyfully, rather than let the church be imperilled.  But here is a poor
captive woman, overwhelmed with sorrows; there is none to defend her,
none to excuse her; they are always afraid to do so.  I maintain that
this stroke of the pen, given by me against my conscience, from a
cowardly policy, would render me forever infamous, and unworthy of my
ministry and my position."  Fenelon no longer submitted his reason and
his conduct, then, to the judgment of Bossuet; he recognized in him an
adversary, but he still spoke of him with profound veneration.  "Fear
not," he writes to Madame de Maintenon, "that I should gainsay M. de
Meaux; I shall never speak of him but as of my master, and of his
propositions but as the rule of faith."  Fenelon was at Cambrai, being
regular in the residence which removed him for nine months in the year
from the court and the children of France, when there appeared his
_Explication des Maximes des Saints sur la Vie Interieure_ (Exposition of
the Maxims of the Saints touching the Inner Life), almost at the same
moment as Bossuet's _Instruction sur les Etats d' Oraison_ (Lessons on
States of Orison).  Fenelon's book appeared as dangerous as those of
Madame Guyon; he himself submitted it to the pope, and was getting ready
to repair to Rome to defend his cause, when the king wrote to him, "I do
not think proper to allow you to go to Rome; you must, on the contrary,
repair to your diocese, whence I forbid you to go away; you can send to
Rome your pleas in justification of your book."

Fenelon departed to an exile which was to last as long as his life; on
his departure, he wrote to Madame de Maintenon, "I shall depart hence,
madame, to-morrow, Friday, in obedience to the king.  My greatest sorrow
is to have wearied him and to displease him.  I shall not cease, all the
days of my life, to pray God to pour His graces upon him.  I consent to
be crushed more and more.  The only thing I ask of his Majesty is, that
the diocese of Cambrai, which is guiltless, may not suffer for the errors
imputed to me.  I ask protection only for the sake of the church, and
even that protection I limit to not being disturbed in those few good
works which my present position permits me to do, in order to fulfil a
pastor's duties.  It remains for me, madame, only to ask your pardon for
all the trouble I have caused you.  I shall all my life be as deeply
sensible of your former kindnesses as if I had not forfeited them, and my
respectful attachment to yourself, madame, will never diminish."

Fenelon made no mistake in addressing to Madame de Maintenon his farewell
and his regrets; she had acted against him with the uneasiness of a
person led away for a moment by an irresistible attraction, and
returning, quite affrighted, to rule and the beaten paths.  The mere love
theory had no power to fascinate her for long.  The Archbishop of Cambrai
did not drop out of that pleasant dignity.  The pious councillors of the
king were working against him at Rome, bringing all the influence of
France to weigh upon Innocent XII.  Fenelon had taken no part in the
declarations of the Gallican church, in 1682, which had been drawn up by
Bossuet; the court of Rome was inclined towards him; the strife became
bitter and personal; pamphlets succeeded pamphlets, letters.  Bossuet
published a _Relation du Quietisme_ (An Account of Quietism), and remarks
upon the reply of M. de Cambrai.  "I write this for the people," he said,
"in order that, the character of M. de Cambrai being known, his eloquence
may, with God's permission, no more impose upon anybody."  Fenelon
replied with a vigor, a fullness, and a moderation which brought men's
minds over to him.  "You do more for me by the excess of your
accusations," said he to Bossuet, "than I could do myself.  But what a
melancholy consolation when we look at the scandal which troubles the
house of God, and which causes so many heretics and libertines (free-
thinkers) to triumph!  Whatever end may be put by a holy pontiff to this
matter, I await it with impatience, having no wish but to obey, no fear
but to be in the wrong, no object but peace.  I hope that it will be seen
from my silence, my unreserved submission, my constant horror of
illusion, my isolation from any book and any person of a suspicious sort,
that the evil you would fain have caused to be apprehended is as
chimerical as the scandal has been real, and that violent measures taken
against imaginary evils turn to poison."

Fenelon was condemned on the 12th of March, 1699; the sentence of Rome
was mild, and hinted no suspicion of heresy; it had been wrested from the
pope by the urgency of Louis XIV.  "It would be painful to his Majesty,"
wrote the Bishop of Meaux in the king's name, "to see a new schism
growing up amongst his subjects at the very time that he is applying
himself with all his might to the task of extirpating that of Calvin, and
if he saw the prolongation, by manoeuvres which are incomprehensible, of
a matter which appeared to be at an end.  He will know what he has to do,
and will take suitable resolutions, still hoping, nevertheless, that his
Holiness will not be pleased to reduce him to such disagreeable
extremities."  When the threat reached Rome, Innocent XII. had already
yielded.

Fenelon submitted to the pope's decision completely and unreservedly.
"God gives me grace to be at peace amidst bitterness and sorrow," he
wrote to the Duke of Beauvilliers on the 29th of March, 1699.  "Amongst
so many troubles I have one consolation little fitted to be known in the
world, but solid enough for those who seek God in good faith, and that
is, that my conduct is quite decided upon, and that I have no longer to
deliberate.  It only remains for me to submit and hold my peace; that is
what I have always desired.  I have now but to choose the terms of my
submission; the shortest, the simplest, the most absolute, the most
devoid of any restriction, are those that I rather prefer.  My conscience
is disburdened in that of my superior.  In all this, far from having an
eye to my advantage, I have no eye to any man; I see but God, and I am
content with what He does."

Bossuet had triumphed: his vaster mind, his more sagacious insight, his
stronger judgment had unravelled the dangerous errors in which Fenelon
had allowed himself to be entangled.  The Archbishop of Cambrai, however,
had grown in the estimation of good men on account of his moderation, his
gentle and high-spirited independence during the struggle, his
submission, full of dignity, after the papal decision.  The mind of
Bossuet was the greater; the spirit of Fenelon was the nobler and more
deeply pious.  "I cannot consent to have my book defended even
indirectly," he wrote to one of his friends on the 21st of July, 1699.
"In God's name, speak not of me but to God only, and leave men to think
as they please; as for me, I have no object but silence and peace after
my unreserved submission."

Fenelon was not detached from the world and his hopes to quite such an
extent as he would have had it appear.  He had educated the Duke of
Burgundy, who remained passionately attached to him, and might hope for a
return of prosperity.  He remained in the silence and retirement of his
diocese, with the character of an able and saintly bishop, keeping open
house, grandly and simply, careful of the welfare of the soldiery who
passed through Cambrai, adored by his clergy and the people.  "Never a
word about the court, or about public affairs of any sort that could be
found fault with, or any that smacked the least in the world of baseness,
regret, or flattery," writes St.  Simon; "never anything that could give
a bare hint of what he had been or might be again.  He was a tall, thin
man, well made, pale, with a large nose, eyes from which fire and
intellect streamed like a torrent, and a physiognomy such that I have
never seen any like it, and there was no forgetting it when it had been
seen but once.  It combined everything, and there was no conflict of
opposites in it.  There were gravity and gallantry, the serious and the
gay; it savored equally of the learned doctor, the bishop, and the great
lord; that which appeared on its surface, as well as in his whole person,
was refinement, intellect, grace, propriety, and, above all, nobility.
It required an effort to cease looking at him.  His manners corresponded
therewith in the same proportion, with an ease which communicated it to
others; with all this, a man who never desired to show more wits than
they with whom he conversed, who put himself within everybody's range
without ever letting it be perceived, in such wise that nobody could drop
him, or fight shy of him, or not want to see him again.  It was this rare
talent, which he possessed to the highest degree, that kept his friends
so completely attached to him all his life, in spite of his downfall, and
that, in their dispersion, brought them together to speak of him, to
sorrow after him, to yearn for him, to bind themselves more and more to
him, as the Jews to Jerusalem, and to sigh after his return and hope
continually for it, just as that unfortunate people still expects and
sighs after the Messiah."

Those faithful friends were dropping one after another.  The death of the
Duke of Burgundy and of the Duke of Chevreuse in 1712, and that of the
Duke of Beauvilliers in 1714, were a fatal blow to the affections as well
as to the ambitious hopes of Fenelon.  Of delicate health, worn out by
the manifold duties of the episcopate, inwardly wearied by long and vain
expectation, he succumbed on the 7th of January, 1715, at the moment when
the attraction shown by the Duke of Orleans towards him and "the king's
declining state" were once more renewing his chances of power.  "He was
already consulted in private and courted again in public," says St.
Simon, "because the inclination of the rising sun had already shown
through."  He died, however, without letting any sign of yearning for
life appear, "regardless of all that he was leaving, and occupied solely
with that which he was going to meet, with a tranquillity, a peace, which
excluded nothing but disquietude, and which included penitence,
despoilment, and a unique care for the spiritual affairs of his diocese."
The Christian soul was detaching itself from the world to go before God
with sweet and simple confidence.  "O, how great is God! how all in all!
How as nothing are we when we are so near Him, and when the veil which
conceals Him from us is about to lift!" [_Euvres de Fenelon, Lettres
Spirituelles,_ xxv. 128.]

[Illustration: Bossuet----591]

So many fires smouldering in the hearts, so many different struggles
going on in the souls, that sought to manifest their personal and
independent life have often caused forgetfulness of the great mass of the
faithful who were neither Jansenists nor Quietists.  Bossuet was the real
head and the pride of the great Catholic church of France in the
seventeenth century; what he approved of was approved of by the immense
majority of the French clergy, what he condemned was condemned by them.
Moderate and prudent in conduct as well as in his opinions, pious without
being fervent, holding discreetly aloof from all excesses, he was a
Gallican without fear and without estrangement as regarded the papal
power, to which he steadfastly paid homage.  It was with pain, and not
without having sought to escape therefrom, that he found himself obliged,
at the assembly of the clergy in 1682, to draw up the solemn declarations
of the Gallican church.  The meeting of the clergy had been called forth
by the eternal discussions of the civil power with the court of Rome on
the question of the rights of regale, that is to say, the rights of the
sovereign to receive the revenues of vacant bishoprics, and to appoint to
benefices belonging to them.  The French bishops were of independent
spirit; the Archbishop of Paris, Francis de Harlay, was on bad terms with
Pope Innocent XI.; Bossuet managed to moderate the discussions, and kept
within suitable bounds the declaration which he could not avoid.  He had
always taught and maintained what was proclaimed by the assembly of the
clergy of France, "that St.  Peter and his successors, vicars of Jesus
Christ, and the whole church itself, received from God authority over
only spiritual matters and such as appertain to salvation, and not over
temporal and civil matters, in such sort that kings and sovereigns are
not subject to tiny ecclesiastical power, by order of God, in temporal
matters, and cannot be deposed directly or indirectly by authority of the
keys of the church; finally, that, though the pope has the principal part
in questions of faith, and though his decrees concern all the churches
and each church severally, his judgment is, nevertheless, not
irrefragable, unless the consent of the church intervene."  Old doctrines
in the church of France, but never before so solemnly declared and made
incumbent upon the teaching of all the faculties of theology in the
kingdom.

Constantly occupied in the dogmatic struggle against Protestantism,
Bossuet had imported into it a moderation in form which, however, did not
keep out injustice.  Without any inclination towards persecution, he,
with almost unanimity on the part of the bishops of France, approved of
the king's piety in the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.  "Take up your
sacred pens," says he in his funeral oration over Michael Le Tellier,

"ye who compose the annals of the church; haste ye to place Louis amongst
the peers of Constantine and Theodosius.  Our fathers saw not as we have
seen an inveterate heresy falling at a single blow, scattered flocks
returning in a mass, and our churches too narrow to receive them, their
false shepherds leaving them without even awaiting the order, and happy
to have their banishment to allege as excuse; all tranquillity amidst so
great a movement; the universe astounded to see in so novel an event the
most certain sign as well as the most noble use of authority, and the
prince's merit more recognized and more revered than even his authority.
Moved by so many marvels, say ye to this new Constantine, this new
Theodosius, this new Marciaau, this new Charlemagne, what the six hundred
and thirty Fathers said aforetime in the council of Chaloedon, You have
confirmed the faith; you have exterminated the heretics; that is the
worthy achievement of your reign, that is its own characteristic.
Through you heresy is no more.  God alone could have wrought this marvel.
King of heaven, preserve the king of earth; that is the prayer of the
churches, that is the prayer of the bishops."  Bossuet, like Louis XIV.,
believed Protestantism to be destroyed.  "Heresy is no more," he said.
It was the same feeling that prompted Louis XIV., when dying, to the
edict of March 8, 1715.  "We learn," said he, "that, abjurations being
frequently made in provinces distant from those in which our newly
converted subjects die, our judges to whom those who die relapsed are
denounced find a difficulty in condemning them, for want of proof of
their abjuration.  The stay which those who were of the religion styled
Reformed have made in our kingdom since we abolished therein all exercise
of the said religion is a more than sufficient proof that they have
embraced the Catholic religion, without which they would have been
neither suffered nor tolerated."  There did not exist, there could not
exist, any more Protestants in France; all who died without sacraments
were relapsed, and as such dragged on the hurdle.  Those who were not
married at a Catholic church were not married.  M. Guizot was born at
Nimes on the 4th of October, 1787, before Protestants possessed any civil
rights in France.

Bossuet had died on the 12th of April, 1704.  When troubles began again
in the church, the enemies of the Jansenists obtained from the king a
decree interdicting the _Reflexions morales cur le Nouveau Testament,_ an
old and highly esteemed work by Father Quesnel, some time an Oratorian,
who had become head of the Jansenists on the death of the great Arnauld.
Its condemnation at Rome was demanded.  Cardinal de Noailles, Archbishop
of Paris, had but lately, as Bishop of Chalons, approved of the book; he
refused to retract his approbation; the Jesuits made urgent
representations to the pope; Clement XI. launched the bull _Unigenitus,_
condemning a hundred and one propositions extracted from the _Reflexions
morales_.  Eight prelates, with Cardinal de Noailles at their head,
protested against the bull; it was, nevertheless, enregistered at the
Parliament, but not without difficulty.  The archbishop still held out,
supported by the greater part of the religious orders and the majority of
the doctors of Sorbonne.  The king's confessor, Letellier, pressed him to
prosecute the cardinal and get him deposed by a national council; the
affair dragged its slow length along at Rome; the archbishop had
suspended from the sacred functions all the Jesuits of his diocese; the
struggle had commenced under the name of Jansenism against the whole
Gallican church.  The king was about to bring the matter before his bed
of justice, when he fell ill.  He saw no more of Cardinal de Noailles,
and this rupture vexed him.  "I am sorry to leave the affairs of the
church in the state in which they are," he said to his councillors.  "I
am perfectly ignorant in the matter; you know, and I call you to witness,
that I have done nothing therein but what you wanted, and that I have
done all you wanted.  It is you who will answer before God for all that
has been done, whether too much or too little.  I charge you with it
before Him, and I have a clear conscience.  I am but a know-nothing who
have left myself to your guidance."  An awful appeal from a dying king to
the guides of his conscience.  He had dispeopled his kingdom, reduced to
exile, despair, or falsehood fifteen hundred thousand of his subjects,
but the memory of the persecutions inflicted upon the Protestants did not
trouble him; they were for him rather a pledge of his salvation and of
his acceptance before God.  He was thinking of the Catholic church, the
holy priests exiled or imprisoned, the nuns driven from their convent,
the division among the bishops, the scandal amongst the faithful.  The
great burden of absolute power was evident to his eyes; he sought to let
it fall back upon the shoulders of those who had enticed him or urged him
upon that fatal path.  A vain attempt in the eyes of men, whatever may be
the judgment of God's sovereign mercy.  History has left weighing upon
Louis XIV. the crushing weight of the religious persecutions ordered
under his reign.




CHAPTER XLVIII.----LOUIS XIV., LITERATURE AND ART.

It has been said in this History that Louis XIV. had the fortune to find
himself at the culminating point of absolute monarchy, and to profit by
the labors of his predecessors, reaping a portion of their glory; he had
likewise the honor of enriching himself with the labors of his
contemporaries, and attracting to himself a share of their lustre; the
honor, be it said, not the fortune, for he managed to remain the centre
of intellectual movement as well as of the court, of literature and art
as well as affairs of state.  Only the abrupt and solitary genius of
Pascal or the prankish and ingenuous geniality of La Fontaine held aloof
from king and court; Racine and Moliere, Bossuet and Fenelon, La Bruyere
and Boileau lived frequently in the circle of Louis XIV., and enjoyed in
different degrees his favor; M. de la Rochefoucauld and Madame de Sevigne
were of the court; Lebrun, Rigaud, Mignard, painted for the king;
Perrault and Mansard constructed the Louvre and Versailles; the learned
of all countries considered it an honor to correspond with the new
academies founded in France.  Louis XIV. was even less a man of letters
or an artist than an administrator or a soldier; but literature and art,
as well as the superintendents and the generals, found in him the King.
The puissant unity of the reign is everywhere the same.  The king and the
nation are in harmony.

Pascal, had he been born later, would have remained independent and
proud, from the nature of his mind and of his character as well as from
the connection he had full early with Port-Royal, where they did not rear
courtiers; he died, however, at thirty-nine, in 1661, the very year in
which Louis XIV. began to govern.  Born at Clermont, in Auvergne,
educated at his father's and by his father, though it was not thought
desirable to let him study mathematics, he had already discovered by
himself the first thirty-two propositions of Euclid, when Cardinal
Richelieu, holding on his knee little Jacqueline Pascal, and looking at
her brother, said to M. Pascal, the two children's father, who had come
to thank him for a favor, "Take care of them; I mean to make something
great of them."  This was the native and powerful instinct of genius
divining genius; Richelieu, however, died three years later, without
having done anything for the children who had impressed him beyond giving
their father a share in the superintendence of Rouen; he thus put them in
the way of the great Corneille, who was affectionately kind to
Jacqueline, but took no particular notice of Blaise Pascal.  The latter
was seventeen; he had already written his _Traite des Coniques_ (Treatise
on Conics) and begun to occupy himself with "his arithmetical machine,"
as his sister, Madame Perier calls it.  At twenty-three he had ceased to
apply his mind to human sciences; "when he afterwards discovered the
roulette (cycloid), it was without thinking," says Madame Perier, "and to
distract his attention from a severe tooth-ache he had."  He was not
twenty-four when anxiety for his salvation and for the glory of God had
taken complete possession of his soul.  It was to the same end that he
composed the _Lettres Provinciales,_ the first of which was written in
six days, and the style of which, clear, lively, precise, far removed
from the somewhat solemn gravity of Port-Royal, formed French prose as
Malherbe and Boileau formed the poetry.  This was the impression of his
contemporaries, the most hard of them to please in the art of writing.
"That is excellent; that will be relished," said the recluses of Port-
Royal, in spite of the misgivings of M. Singlin.  More than thirty years
after Pascal's ddath, Madame de Sevigne, in 1689, wrote to Madame de
Grignan, "Sometimes, to divert ourselves, we read the little Letters (to
a provincial).  Good heavens, how charming!  And how my son reads them!
I always think of my daughter, and how that excess of correctness of
reasoning would suit her; but your brother says that you consider that it
is always the same thing over again.  Ah!  My goodness, so much the
better!  Could any one have a more perfect style, a raillery more
refined, more natural, more delicate, worthier offspring of those
dialogues of Plato, which are so fine?  And when, after the first ten
letters, he addresses himself to the reverend Jesuit fathers, what
earnestness, what solidity, what force!  What eloquence!  What love for
God and for the truth!  What a way of maintaining it and making it
understood!  I am sure that you have never read them but in a hurry,
pitching on the pleasant places; but it is not so when they are read at
leisure."  Lord Macaulay once said to M. Guizot, "Amongst modern works I
know only two perfect ones, to which there is no exception to be taken,
and they are _Pascal's Provincials_ and the _Letters of Madame de
Sevigne_."

[Illustration: Blaise Pascal----597]

Boileau was of Lord Macaulay's opinion; at least as regarded Pascal.
"Corbinelli wrote to me the other day," says Madame de Sevigne, on the
15th of January, 1690: "he gave me an account of a conversation and a
dinner at M. de Lamoignon's: the persons were the master and mistress of
the house, M. de Troyes, M. de Toulon, Father Bourdaloue, a comrade of
his, Desprdaux, and Corbinelli.  The talk was of ancient and modern
works.  Despreaux supported the ancient, with the exception of one single
modern, which surpassed, in his opinion, both old and new.  Bourdaloue's
comrade, who assumed the well-read air, and who had fastened on to
Despreaux and Corbinelli, asked him what in the world this book could be
that was so remarkably clever.  Despreaux would not give the name.
Corbinelli said to him, 'Sir, I conjure you to tell me, that I may read
it all night.'  Despreaux answered, laughing, 'Ah! sir, you have read it
more than once, I am sure.'  The Jesuit joins in, with a disdainful air,
and presses Despreaux to name this marvellous writer.  'Do not press me,
father,' says Despreaux.  The father persists.  At last Despreaux takes
hold of his arm, and squeezing it very hard, says, 'You will have it,
father; well, then, egad! it is Pascal.'  'Pascal,' says the father, all
blushes and astonishment; 'Pascal is as beautiful as the false can be.'
'False,' replied Despreaux: 'false! Let me tell you that he is as true as
he is inimitable; he has just been translated into three languages.'  The
father rejoined, 'He is none the more true for that.' Despreaux grew
warm, and shouted like a madman: 'Well, father, will you say that one of
yours did not have it printed in one of his books that a Christian was
not obliged to love God?  Dare you say that that is false?'  'Sir,' said
the father, in a fury, 'we must distinguish.'  'Distinguish!' cried
Despreaux; 'distinguish, egad! distinguish!  Distinguish whether we are
obliged to love God!'  And, taking Corbinelli by the arm, he flew off to
the other end of the room, coming back again, and rushing about like a
lunatic; but he would not go near the father any more, and went off to
join the rest of the company.  Here endeth the story; the curtain falls."
Literary taste and religious sympathies combined, in the case of Boileau,
to exalt Pascal.

The provincials could not satisfy for long the pious ardor of Pascal's
soul; he took in hand his great work on the _Verite de la Religion_.
He had taken a vigorous part in the discussions of Port-Royal as to
subscription of the formulary: his opinion was decidedly in favor of
resistance.  It was the moment when MM. Arnauld and Nicole had discovered
a restriction, as it was then called, which allowed of subscribing with a
safe conscience.  "M. Pascal, who loved truth above all things," writes
his niece, Marguerite Perier; "who, moreover, was pulled down by a pain
in the head, which never left him; who had exerted himself to make them
feel as he himself felt; and who had expressed himself very vigorously in
spite of his weakness, was so grief-stricken that he had a fit, and lost
speech and consciousness.  Everybody was alarmed.  Exertions were made to
bring him round, and then those gentlemen withdrew.  When he was quite
recovered, Madame Perier asked him what had caused this incident.  He
answered, 'When I saw all those persons that I looked upon as being those
whom God had made to know the truth, and who ought to be its defenders,
wavering and falling.  I declare to you that I was so overcome with grief
that I was unable to support it, and could not help breaking down.'"
Blaise Pascal was the worthy brother of Jacqueline; in the former, as
well as the latter, the soul was too ardent and too strong for its
covering of body.  Nearly all his relatives died young.  "I alone am
left," wrote Mdlle. Perier, when she had become, exceptionally, very
aged.  "I might say, like Simon Maccabeus, the last of all his brethren,
All my relatives and all my brethren are dead in the service of God and
in the love of truth.  I alone am left; please God I may never have a
thought of backsliding!"

Pascal was unable to finish his work.  "God, who had inspired my brother
with this design and with all his thoughts," writes his sister, "did not
permit him to bring it to its completion, for reasons to us unknown."
The last years of Pascal's life, invalid as he had been from the age of
eighteen, were one long and continual torture, accepted and supported
with an austere disdain of suffering.  Incapable of any application, he
gave his attention solely to his salvation and the care of the poor.
"I have taken it into my head," says he, "to have in the house a sick
pauper, to whom the same service shall be rendered as to myself;
particular attention to be paid to him, and, in fact, no difference to be
made between him and me, in order that I may have the consolation of
knowing that there is one pauper as well treated as myself, in the
perplexity I suffer from finding myself in the great affluence of every
sort in which I do find myself."  The spirit of M. de St. Cyran is there,
and also the spirit of the gospel, which caused Pascal, when he was
dying, to say, "I love poverty, because Jesus Christ loved it.  I love
wealth, because it gives the means of assisting the needy."  A genius
unique in the extent and variety of his faculties, which were applied
with the same splendid results to mathematics and physics, to philosophy
and polemics, disdaining all preconceived ideas, going unerringly and
straightforwardly to the bottom of things with admirable force and
profundity, independent and free even in his voluntary submission to the
Christian faith, which he accepts with his eyes open, after having
weighed it, measured it, and sounded it to its uttermost depths, too
steadfast and too simple not to bow his head before mysteries, all the
while acknowledging his ignorance.  "If there were no darkness," says he,
"man would not feel his corruption; if there were no light, man would
have no hope of remedy.  Thus it is not only quite right, but useful, for
us that God should be concealed in part, and revealed in part, since it
is equally dangerous for man to know God without knowing his own misery,
and to know his own misery without knowing God."  The lights of this
great intellect had led him to acquiesce in his own fogs.  "One can be
quite sure that there is a God, without knowing what He is," says he.

In 1627, four years after Pascal, and, like him, in a family of the long
robe, was born, at Dijon, his only rival in that great art of writing
prose which established the superiority of the French language.  At
sixteen, Bossuet preached his first sermon in the drawing-room of Madame
de Rambouillet, and the great Conde was pleased to attend his theological
examinations.  He was already famous at court as a preacher and a
polemist when the king gave him the title of Bishop of Condom, almost
immediately inviting him to become preceptor to the dauphin.  A difficult
and an irksome task for him who had already written for Turenne an
exposition of the Catholic faith, and had delivered the funeral orations
over Madame Henriette and the Queen of England.  "The king has greatly at
heart the dauphin's education," wrote Father Lacoue to Colbert; "he
regards it as one of his grand state-strokes in respect of the future."
The dauphin was not devoid of intelligence.  "Monseigneur has plenty of
wits," said Councillor Le Gout de Saint-Seine in his private journal,
"but his wits are under a bushel."  The boy was indolent, with little
inclination for work, roughly treated by his governor, the Duke of
Montausier, who was endowed with more virtue than ability in the
superintendence of a prince's education.  "O," cried Monseigneur, when
official announcement was made to him of the project of marriage which
the king was conducting for him with the Princess Christine of Bavaria,
"we shall see whether M. Huet (afterwards bishop of Avranches) will want
to make me learn ancient geography any more!"  Bossuet had better
understood what ought to be the aim of a king's education.  "Remember,
Monseigneur," he constantly repeated to him, "that destined as you are to
reign some day over this great kingdom, you are bound to make it happy."
He was in despair at his pupil's inattention.  "There is a great deal to
endure with a mind so destitute of application," he wrote to Marshal
Bellefonds; "there is no perceptible relief, and we go on, as St. Paul
says, hoping against hope."  He had written a little treatise on
inattention, _De Incogitantia,_--in the vain hope of thus rousing his
pupil to work.  "I dread nothing in the world so much," Louis XIV would
say, "as to have a sluggard (_faineant_) dauphin; I would much prefer to
have no son at all!"  Bossuet foresaw the innumerable obstacles in the
way of his labors.  "I perceive, as I think," he wrote to his friends,
"in the dauphin the beginnings of great graces, a simplicity, a
straightforwardness, a principle of goodness, an attention, amidst all
his flightiness, to the mysteries, a something or other which comes with
a flash, in the middle of his distractions, to call him back to God.  You
would be charmed if I were to tell you the questions he puts to me, and
the desire he shows to be a good servant of God.  But the world! the
world! the world! pleasures, evil counsels, evil examples!  Save us,
Lord! save us!  Thou didst verily preserve the children from the furnace,
but Thou didst send Thine angel; and, as for me, alas! what am I?
Humility, trepidation, absorption into one's own nothingness!"

It was not for Bossuet that the honor was reserved of succeeding in the
difficult task of a royal education.  Fenelon encountered in the Duke of
Burgundy a more undisciplined nature, a more violent character, and more
dangerous tendencies than Bossuet had to fight against in the
grand-dauphin; but there was a richer mind and a warmer heart; the
preceptor, too, was more proper for the work.  Bossuet, nevertheless,
labored conscientiously to instruct his little prince, studying for him
and with him the classical authors, preparing grammatical expositions,
and, lastly, writing for his edification the _Traite de la Connaissance
de Dieu et de soi-mime_ (Treatise on the Knowledge of God and of Self),
the _Discours sur l'Histoire Universelle_ (Discourse on Universal
History), and the _Politique tiree de l'Ecriture Sainte_ (Polity derived
from Holy Writ).  The labor was in vain; the very loftiness of his
genius, the extent and profundity of his views, rendered Bossuet unfit to
get at the heart and mind of a boy who was timid, idle, and kept in fear
by the king as well as by his governor.  The dauphin was nineteen when
his marriage restored Bossuet to the church and to the world; the king
appointed him almoner to the dauphiness, and, before long, Bishop of
Meaux.

Neither the assembly of the clergy and the part he played therein, nor
his frequent preachings at court, diverted Bossuet from his duties as
bishop; he habitually resided at Meaux, in the midst of his priests.  The
greater number of his sermons, written at first in fragments, collected
from memory in their aggregate, and repeated frequently with divergences
in wording and development, were preached in the cathedral of Meaux.  The
dauphin sometimes went thither to see him.  "Pray, sir," he had said to
him, in his childhood, "take great care of me whilst I am little; I will
of you when I am big."  Assured of his righteousness as a priest and his
fine tact as a man, the king appealed to Bossuet in the delicate
conjunctures of his life.  It is related that it was the Bishop of Meaux
who dissuaded him from making public his marriage with Madame de
Maintenon.  She, more anxious for power than splendor, did not bear him
any ill-will for it; amidst the various leanings of the court, divided as
it was between Jansenism and Quietism, it was to the simple teaching of