the Catholic church, represented by Bossuet, that she remained
practically attached.  Right-minded and strong-minded, but a little
cold-hearted, Madame de Maintenon could not suffer herself to be led away
by the sublime excesses of the Jansenists or the pious reveries of Madame
Guyon; the Jesuits had influence over her, without her being a slave to
them; and that influence increased after the death of Bossuet.  The
guidance of the Bishop of Meaux, in fact, answered the requirements of
spirits that were pious and earnest without enthusiasm: less ardent in
faith and less absolute in religious practice than M. de St. Cyran and
Port-Royal, less exacting in his demands than Father Bourdaloue,
susceptible now and then of mystic ideas, as is proved by his letters to
Sister Cornuau, he did not let himself be won by the vague ecstasies of
absolute (pure) love; he had a mind large enough to say, like Mother
Angelica Arnauld, "I am of all saints' order, and all saints are of my
order; "but his preferences always inclined towards those saints and
learned doctors who had not carried any religious tendency to excess, and
who had known how to rest content with the spirit of a rule and a faith
that were practical.  A wonderful genius, discovering by flashes, and as
if by instinct, the most profound truths of human nature, and giving them
expression in an incomparable style, forcing, straining the language to
make it render his idea, darting at one bound to the sublimest height by
use of the simplest terms, which he, so to speak, bore away with him,
wresting them from their natural and proper signification.  "There, in
spite of that great heart of hers, is that princess so admired and so
beloved; there, such as Death has made her for us!"  Bossuet alone could
speak like that.

He was writing incessantly, all the while that he was preaching at Meaux
and at Paris, making funeral orations over the queen, Maria Theresa, over
the Princess Palatine, Michael Le Tellier, and the Prince of Conde.  The
Edict of Nantes had just been revoked; controversy with the Protestant
ministers, headed by Claude and Jurieu, occupied a great space in the
life of the Bishop of Meaux.  He at that time wrote his _Histoire des
Variations,_ often unjust and violent, always able in its attacks upon
the Reformation; he did not import any zeal into persecution, though all
the while admitting unreservedly the doctrines universally propagated
amongst Catholics.  "I declare," he wrote to M. de Baville, "that I am
and have always been of opinion, first, that princes may by penal laws
constrain all heretics to conform to the profession and practices of the
Catholic church; secondly, that this doctrine ought to be held invariable
in the church, which has not only conformed to, but has even demanded,
similar ordinances from princes."  He at the same time opposed the
constraint put upon the new converts to oblige them to go to mass,
without requiring from them any other act of religion.

"When the emperors imposed a like obligation on the Donatists," he wrote
to the Bishop of Mirepoix, "it was on the supposition that they were
converted, or would be; but the heretics at the present time, who declare
themselves by not fulfilling their Easter (communicating), ought to be
rather hindered from assisting at the mysteries than constrained thereto,
and the more so in that it appears to be a consequence thereof to
constrain them likewise to fulfil their Easter, which is expressly to
give occasion for frightful sacrilege.  They might be constrained to
undergo instruction; but, so far as I can learn, that would hardly
advance matters, and I think that we must be reduced to three things; one
is, to oblige them to send their children to the schools, or, in default,
to find means of taking them out of their hands; another is, to be firm
as regards marriages; and the last is, to take great pains to become
privately acquainted with those of whom there are good hopes, and to
procure for them solid instruction and veritable enlightenment; the rest
must be left to time and to the grace of God.  I know of nothing else."
About the same time Fenelon, engaged upon the missions in Poitou, being
as much convinced as the Bishop of Meaux of a sovereign's rights over the
conscience of the faithful, as well as of the terrible danger of
hypocrisy, wrote to Bossuet, telling him that he had demanded the
withdrawal of the troops in all the districts he was visiting: "It is no
light matter to change the sentiments of a whole people.  What difficulty
must the apostles have found in changing the face of the universe,
overcoming all passions, and establishing a doctrine till then unheard
of, seeing that we cannot persuade the ignorant by clear and express
passages which they read every day in favor of the religion of their
ancestors, and that the king's own authority stirs up every passion to
render persuasion more easy for us!  The remnants of this sect go on
sinking little by little, as regards all exterior observance, into a
religious indifference which cannot but cause fear and trembling.  If one
wanted to make them abjure Christianity and follow the Koran, there would
be nothing required but to show them the dragoons; provided that they
assemble by night, and withstand all instruction, they consider that they
have done enough."  Cardinal Noailles was of the same mind as Bossuet and
FEnelon.  "The king will be pained to decide against your opinion as
regards the new converts," says a letter to him from Madame de Maintenon;
"meanwhile the most general is to force them to attend at mass.  Your
opinion seems to be a condemnation of all that has been hitherto done
against these poor creatures.  It is not pleasant to hark back so far,
and it has always been supposed that, in any case, they must have a
religion."  In vain were liberty of conscience and its inviolable rights
still misunderstood by the noblest spirits, the sincerity and
high-mindedness of the great bishops instinctively revolted against
the hypocrisy engendered of persecution.  The tacit assuagement of the
severities against the Reformers, between 1688 and 1700, was the fruit of
the representations of Bossuet, Fenelon, and Cardinal Noailles.  Madame
de Maintenon wrote at that date to one of her relatives, "You are
converted; do not meddle in the conversion of others.  I confess to you
that I do not like the idea of answering before God and the king for all
those conversions."

At the same time with the controversial treatises, the _Elevations sur
les Mysteres_ and the _Meditations sur l'Evangile_ were written at Meaux,
drawing the bishop away to the serener regions of supreme faith.  There
might he have chanced to meet those Reformers, as determined as he in the
strife, as attached, at bottom, as he, for life and death, to the
mysteries and to the lights of a common hope.  "When God shall give us
grace to enter Paradise," St. Bernard used to say, "we shall be above all
astonished at not finding some of those whom we had thought to meet
there, and at finding others whom we did not expect."  Bossuet had a
moments glimpse of this higher truth; in concert with Leibnitz, a great
intellect of more range in knowledge and less steadfastness than he in
religious faith, he tried to reconcile the Catholic and Protestant
communions in one and the same creed.  There were insurmountable
difficulties on both sides; the attempt remained unsuccessful.

The Bishop of Meaux had lately triumphed in the matter of Quietism,
breaking the ties of old friendship with Fenelon, and more concerned
about defending sound doctrine in the church than fearful of hurting his
friend, who was sincere and modest in his relations with him, and humbly
submissive to the decrees of the court of Rome.  The Archbishop of
Cambrai was in exile at his own diocese; Bossuet was ill at Meaux, still,
however, at work, going deeper every day into that profound study of Holy
Writ and of the fathers of the church which shines forth in all his
writings.  He had stone, and suffered agonies, but would not permit an
operation.  On his death-bed, surrounded by his nephews and his vicars,
he rejected with disdain all eulogies on his episcopal life.  "Speak to
me of necessary truths," said he, preserving to the last the simplicity
of a great and strong mind, accustomed to turn from appearances and
secondary doctrines to embrace the mighty realities of time and of
eternity.  He died at Paris on the 12th of April, 1704, just when the
troubles of the church were springing up again.  Great was the
consternation amongst the bishops of France, wont as they were to shape
themselves by his counsels.  "Men were astounded at this mortal's
mortality."  Bossuet was seventy-three.

A month later, on the 13th of May, Father Bourdaloue in his turn died.
A model of close logic and moral austerity, with a stiff and manly
eloquence, so impressed with the miserable insufficiency of human
efforts, that he said as he was dying, "My God, I have wasted life; it is
just that Thou recall it."  There remained only Fenelon in the first
rank, which Massillon did not as yet dispute with him.  Malebranche was
living retired in his cell at the Oratory, seldom speaking, writing his
_Recherches sur la Verite_ (Researches into Truth), and his _Entretiens
sur la Metaphysique_ (Discourses on Metaphysics), bolder in thought than
he was aware of or wished, sincere and natural in his meditations as well
as in his style.  In spite of Flechier's eloquence in certain funeral
orations, posterity has decided against the modesty of the Archbishop of
Cambrai, who said at the death of the Bishop of Nimes, in 1710, "We have
lost our master."  In his retirement or his exile, after Bossuet's death,
it was around Fenelon that was concentrated all the lustre of the French
episcopate, long since restored to the respect and admiration it
deserved.

Fenelon was born in Perigord, at the castle of Fenelon, on the 6th of
August, 1651.  Like Cardinal Retz he belonged to an ancient and noble
house, and was destined from his youth for the church.  Brought up at the
seminary of St. Sulpice, lately founded by M. Olier, he for a short time
conceived the idea of devoting himself to foreign missions; his weak
health and his family's opposition turned him ere long from his purpose,
but the preaching of the gospel amongst the heathen continued to have for
him an attractionn which is perfectly depicted in one of the rare sermons
of his which have been preserved.  He had held himself modestly aloof,
occupied with confirming new Catholics in their conversion or with
preaching to the Protestants of Poitou; he had written nothing but his
_Traite de l'Education des Filles,_ intended for the family of the Duke
of Beauvilliers, and a book on the _ministere du pasteur_.  He was in bad
odor with Harlay, Archbishop of Paris, who had said to him curtly one
day, "You want to escape notice, M. Abbe, and you will;" nevertheless,
when Louis XIV. chose the Duke of Beauvilliers as governor to his
grandson, the Duke of Burgundy, the duke at once called Fenelon, then
thirty-eight years of age, to the important post of preceptor.

Whereas the grand-dauphin, endowed with ordinary intelligence, was
indolent and feeble, his son was, in the same proportion, violent, fiery,
indomitable.  "The Duke of Burgundy," says St. Simon, "was a born demon
(_naquit terrible_), and in his early youth caused fear and trembling.
Harsh, passionate, even to the last degree of rage against inanimate
things, madly impetuous, unable to bear the least opposition, even from
the hours and the elements, without flying into furies enough to make you
fear that everything inside him would burst; obstinate to excess,
passionately fond of all pleasures, of good living, of the chase madly,
of music with a sort of transport, and of play too, in which he could not
bear to lose; often ferocious, naturally inclined to cruelty, savage in
raillery, taking off absurdities with a patness which was killing; from
the height of the clouds he regarded men as but atoms to whom he bore no
resemblance, whoever they might be.  Barely did the princes his brothers
appear to him intermediary between himself and the human race, although
there had always been an affectation of bringing them all three up in
perfect equality; wits, penetration, flashed from every part of him, even
in his transports; his repartees were astounding, his replies always went
to the point and deep down, even in his mad fits; he made child's play of
the most abstract sciences; the extent and vivacity of his wits were
prodigious, and hindered him from applying himself to one thing at a
time, so far as to render him incapable of it."

As a sincere Christian and a priest, Fenelon saw from the first that
religion alone could triumph over this terrible nature; the Duke of
Beauvilliers, as sincere and as christianly as he, without much wits,
modestly allowed himself to be led; all the motives that act most
powerfully on a generous spirit, honor, confidence, fear and love of
God, were employed one after the other to bring the prince into
self-subjection.  He was but eight years old, and Fenelon had been only
a few months with him, when the child put into his hands one day the
following engagement:--

"I promise M. l'Abbe de Fenelon, on the honor of a prince, to do at once
whatever he bids me, and to obey him the instant he orders me anything,
and, if I fail to, I will submit to any kind of punishment and disgrace."

"Done at Versailles the 29th of November, 1689.
"Signed: Louis."


[Illustration: Fenelon and the Duke of Burgundy----610]

The child, however, would forget himself, and relapse into his mad fits.
When his preceptor was chiding him one day for a grave fault, he went so
far as to say, "No, no, sir; I know who I am and what you are."  Fenelon
made no reply; coldly and gravely he allowed the day to close and the
night to pass without showing his pupil any sign of either resentment or
affection.  Next day the Duke of Burgundy was scarcely awake when his
preceptor entered the room.  "I do not know, sir," said he, "whether you
remember what you said to me yesterday, that you know what you are and
what I am.  It is my duty to teach you that you do not know either one or
the other.  You fancy yourself, sir, to be more than I; some lackeys, no
doubt, have told you so, but I am not afraid to tell you, since you force
me to it, that I am more than you.  You have sense enough to understand
that there is no question here of birth.  You would consider anybody out
of his wits who pretended to make a merit of it that the rain of heaven
had fertilized his crops without moistening his neighbors.  You would be
no wiser if you were disposed to be vain of your birth, which adds
nothing to your personal merit.  You cannot doubt that I am above you in
lights and knowledge.  You know nothing but what I have taught you; and
what I have taught you is nothing compared with what I might still teach
you.  As for authority, you have none over me; and I, on the contrary,
have it fully and entirely over you; the king and Monseigneur have told
you so often enough.  You fancy, perhaps, that I think myself very
fortunate to hold the office I discharge towards you; disabuse yourself
once more, sir; I only took it in order to obey the king and give
pleasure to Monseigneur, and not at all for the painful privilege of
being your preceptor; and, that you may have no doubt about it, I am
going to take you to his Majesty, and beg him to get you another one,
whose pains I hope may be more successful than mine."  The Duke of
Burgundy's passion was past, and he burst into sobs.  "Ah! sir," he
cried, "I am in despair at what took place yesterday; if you speak to
the king, you will lose me his affection; if you leave me, what will be
thought of me?  I promise you.  I promise you .  .  .  that you shall be
satisfied with me; but promise me .  .  ."

Fenelon promised nothing; he remained, and the foundation of his
authority was laid forever in the soul of his pupil.  The young prince
did not forget what he was, but he had felt the superiority of his
master.  "I leave the Duke of Burgundy behind the door," he was
accustomed to say, "and with you I am only little Louis."

God, at the same time with Fenelon, had taken possession of the Duke of
Burgundy's soul.  "After his first communion, we saw disappearing little
by little all the faults which, in his infancy, caused us great
misgivings as to the future," writes Madame de Maintenon.  "His piety has
caused such a metamorphosis that, from the passionate thing he was, he
has become self-restrained, gentle, complaisant; one would say that that
was his character, and that virtue was natural to him."  "All his mad
fits and spites yielded at the bare name of God," Fenelon used to say;
"one day when he was in a very bad temper, and wanted to hide in his
passion what he had done in his disobedience, I pressed him to tell me
the truth before God; then he put himself into a great rage and bawled,
'Why ask me before God?  Very well, then, as you ask me in that way, I
cannot deny that I committed that fault.'  He was as it were beside
himself with excess of rage, and yet religion had such dominion over him
that it wrung from him so painful an avowal."  "From this abyss," writes
the Duke of St. Simon, "came forth a prince affable, gentle, humane,
self-restrained, patient, modest, humble, and austere towards himself,
wholly devoted to his obligations and feeling them to be immense; he
thought of nothing but combining the duties of a son and a subject with
those to which he saw himself destined."

"From this abyss " came forth also a prince singularly well informed,
fond of study, with a refined taste in literature, with a passion for
science; for his instruction Fenelon made use of the great works composed
for his father's education by Bossuet, adding thereto writings more
suitable for his age; for him he composed the _Fables_ and the _Dialogues
des Morts,_ and a _Histoire de Charlemagne_ which has perished.  In his
stories, even those that were imaginary, he paid attention before
everything to truth.  "Better leave a history in all its dryness than
enliven it at the expense of truth," he would say.  The suppleness and
richness of his mind sufficed to save him from wearisomeness; the
liveliness of his literary impressions communicated itself to his pupil.
"I have seen," says Fenelon in his letter to the French Academy, "I have
seen a young prince, but eight years old, overcome with grief at sight of
the peril of little Joash; I have seen him lose patience with the chief
priest for concealing from Joash his name and his birth; I have seen him
weeping bitterly as he listened to these verses:--

'O! miseram Euridicen anima fugiente vocabat;
Euridicen toto referebant flumine ripx.'"

The soul and mind of Fenelon were sympathetic; Bossuet, in writing for
the grand-dauphin, was responsive to the requirements of his own mind,
never to those of the boy's with whose education he had been intrusted.

Fenelon also wrote _Telemaque_.  "It is a fabulous narrative," he himself
says, "in the form of an heroic poem, like Homer's or Virgil's, wherein I
have set forth the principal actions that are meet for a prince whose
birth points him out as destined to reign.  I did it at a time when I was
charmed with the marks of confidence and kindness showered upon me by the
king; I must have been not only the most ungrateful but the most
insensate of men to have intended to put into it satirical and insolent
portraits; I shrink from the bare idea of such a design.  It is true that
I have inserted in these adventures all the verities necessary for
government and all the defects that one can show in the exercise of
sovereign power; but I have not stamped any of them with a peculiarity
which would point to any portrait or caricature.  The more the work is
read, the more it will be seen that I wished to express everything
without depicting anybody consecutively; it is, in fact, a narrative done
in haste, in detached pieces and at different intervals; all I thought of
was to amuse the Duke of Burgundy, and, whilst amusing, to instruct him,
without ever meaning to give the work to the public."

_Telemaque_ was published, without any author's name and by an
indiscretion of the copyist's, on the 6th of April, 1699.  Fenelon was in
exile at his diocese; public rumor before long attributed the work to
him; the _Maximes des Saints_ had just been condemned, _Telemaque_ was
seized, the printers were punished; some copies had escaped the police;
the book was reprinted in Holland; all Europe read it, finding therein
the allusions and undermeanings against which Fenelon defended himself.
Louis XIV. was more than ever angry with the archbishop.  "I cannot
forgive M. de Cambrai for having composed the Telemaque," Madame de
Maintenon would say.  Fenelon's disgrace, begun by the _Maximes des
Saints_ touching absolute (pure) love, was confirmed by his ideal picture
of kingly power.  Chimerical in his theories of government, high-flown in
his pious doctrines, Fenelon, in the conduct of his life as well as in
his practical directions to his friends, showed a wisdom, a prudence, a
tact which singularly belied the free speculations of his mind or his
heart.  He preserved silence amid the commendations and criticisms of the
_Telemaque_.  "I have no need and no desire to change my position," he
would say; "I am beginning to be old, and I am infirm; there is no
occasion for my friends to ever commit themselves or to take any doubtful
step on my account.  I never sought out the court; I was sent for
thither.  I staid there nearly ten years without obtruding myself,
without taking a single step on my own behalf, without asking the
smallest favor, without meddling in any matter, and confining myself to
answering conscientiously in all matters about which I was spoken to.
I was dismissed; all I have to do is to remain at peace in my own place.
I doubt not that, besides the matter of my condemned work, the policy of
_Telemaque_ was employed against me upon the king's mind; but I must
suffer and hold my tongue."

Every tongue was held within range of King Louis XIV.  It was only on the
22d of December, 1701, four years after Fenelon's departure, that the
Duke of Burgundy thought he might write to him in the greatest secrecy:
"At last, my dear archbishop, I find a favorable opportunity of breaking
the silence I have kept for four years.  I have suffered many troubles
since, but one of the greatest has been that of being unable to show you
what my feelings towards you were during that time, and that my affection
increased with your misfortunes, instead of being chilled by them.  I
think with real pleasure on the time when I shall be able to see you
again, but I fear that this time is still a long way off.  It must be
left to the will of God, from whose mercy I am always receiving new
graces.  I have been many times unfaithful to Him since I saw you, but He
has always done me the grace of recalling me to Him, and I have not,
thank God, been deaf to His voice.  I continue to study all alone,
although I have not been doing so in the regular way for the last two
years, and I like it more than ever.  But nothing gives me more pleasure
than metaphysics and ethics, and I am never tired of working at them.  I
have done some little pieces myself, which I should very much like to be
in a position to send you, that you might correct them as you used to do
my themes in old times.  I shall not tell you here how my feelings
revolted against all that has been done in your case, but we must submit
to the will of God and believe that all has happened for our good.
Farewell, my dear archbishop.  I embrace you with all my heart; I ask
your prayers and your blessing.  --Louis."

"I speak to you of God and yourself only," answered Fenelon in a letter
full of wise and tender counsels; it is no question of me.  Thank God, I
have a heart at ease; my heaviest cross is that I do not see you, but I
constantly present you before God in closer presence than that of the
senses.  I would give a thousand lives like a drop of water to see you
such as God would have you."

Next year, in 1702, the king gave the Duke of Burgundy the command of the
army in Flanders.  He wrote to Fenelon, "I cannot feel myself so near you
without testifying my joy thereat, and, at the same time, that which is
caused by the king's permission to call upon you on my way; he has,
however, imposed the condition that I must not see you in private.  I
shall obey this order, and yet I shall be able to talk to you as much as
I please, for I shall have with me Saumery, who will make the third at
our first interview after five years' separation."  The archbishop was
preparing to leave Cambrai so as not to be in the prince's way; he now
remained, only seeing the Duke of Burgundy, however, in the presence of
several witnesses; when he presented him with his table-napkin at supper,
the prince raised his voice, and, turning to his old master, said, with a
touching reminiscence of his childhood's passions, "I know what I owe
you; you know what I am to you."

The correspondence continued, with confidence and deference on the part
of the prince, with tender, sympathetic, far-sighted, paternal interest
on the part of the archbishop, more and more concerned for the perils and
temptations to which the prince was exposed in proportion as he saw him
nearer to the throne and more exposed to the incense of the world.  "The
right thing is to become the counsel of his Majesty," he wrote to him on
the death of the grand dauphin, "the father of the people, the comfort of
the afflicted, the defender of the church; the right thing is to keep
flatterers aloof and distrust them, to distinguish merit, seek it out and
anticipate it, to listen to everything, believe nothing without proof,
and, being placed above all, to rise superior to every one.  The right
thing is to desire to be father and not master.  The right thing is not
that all should be for one, but that one should be for all, to secure
their happiness."  A solemn and touching picture of an absolute monarch,
submitting to God and seeking His will alone.  Fenelon had early imbued
his pupil with the spirit of it; and the pupil appeared on the point of
realizing it; but God at a single blow destroyed all these fair hopes.
"All my ties are broken," said Fenelon; "I live but on affection, and of
affection I shall die; we shall recover ere long that which we have not
lost; we approach it every day with rapid strides; yet a little while,
and there will be no more cause for tears."  A week later he was dead,
leaving amongst his friends, so diminished already by death, an
immeasurable gap, and amongst his adversaries themselves the feeling of a
great loss.  "I am sorry for the death of M. de Cambrai," wrote Madame de
Maintenon on the 10th of January, 1715; "he was a friend I lost through
Quietism, but it is asserted that he might have done good service in the
council, if things should be pushed so far."  Fenelon had not been
mistaken, when he wrote once upon a time to Madame de Maintenon, who
consulted him about her defects, "You are good towards those for whom you
have liking and esteem, but you are cold so soon as the liking leaves
you; when you are frigid your frigidity is carried rather far, and, when
you begin to feel mistrust, your heart is withdrawn too brusquely from
those to whom you had shown confidence."

Fenelon had never shown any literary prepossessions.  He wrote for his
friends or for the Duke of Burgundy, lavishing the treasures of his mind
and spirit upon his letters of spiritual guidance, composing, in order to
convince the Duke of Orleans, his _Traite de l'Existence de Dieu,_
indifferent as to the preservation of the sermons he preached every
Sunday, paying more attention to the plans of government he addressed to
the young dauphin than to the publication of his works.  Several were not
collected until after his death.  In delivering their eulogy of him at
the French Academy, neither M. de Boze, who succeeded him, nor M. Dacier,
director of the Academy, dared to mention the name of _Telemaque_.
Clever (_spirituel_) "to an alarming extent" (_faire peur_) in the
minutest detail of his writings, rich, copious, harmonious, but not
without tendencies to lengthiness, the style of Fenelon is the reflex of
his character; sometimes, a little subtle and covert, like the prelate's
mind, it hits and penetrates without any flash (_eclat_) and without
dealing heavy blows.  "Graces flowed from his lips," said Chancellor
d'Aguesseau, "and he seemed to treat the greatest subjects as if, so to
speak, they were child's play to him; the smallest grew to nobleness
beneath his pen, and he would have made flowers grow in the midst of
thorns.  A noble singularity, pervading his whole person, and a something
sublime in his very simplicity, added to his characteristics a certain
prophet-like air.  Always original, always creative, he imitated nobody,
and himself appeared inimitable."  His last act was to write a letter to
Father Le Tellier to be communicated to the king.  "I have just received
extreme unction; that is, the state, reverend father, when I am preparing
to appear before God, in which I pray you with instance to represent to
the king my true sentiments.  I have never felt anything but docility
towards the church and horror at the innovations which have been imputed
to me.  I accepted the condemnation of my book in the most absolute
simplicity.  I have never been a single moment in my life without feeling
towards the king personally the most lively gratitude, the most genuine
zeal, the most profound respect, and the most inviolable attachment.  I
take the liberty of asking of his Majesty two favors, which do not
concern either my own person or anybody belonging to me.  The first is,
that he will have the goodness to give me a pious and methodical
successor, sound and firm against Jansenism, which is in prodigious
credit on this frontier.  The other favor is, that he will have the
goodness to complete with my successor that which could not be completed
with me on behalf of the gentlemen of St. Sulpice.  I wish his Majesty a
long life, of which the church as well as the state has infinite need.
If peradventure I go into the presence of God, I shall often ask these
favors of Him."

How dread is the power of sovereign majesty, operative even at the
death-bed of the greatest and noblest spirits, causing Fenelon in his
dying hour to be anxious about the good graces of a monarch ere long,
like him, a-dying !

Our thoughts may well linger over those three great minds, Pascal,
Bossuet, and Fenelon,--one layman and two bishops; all equally absorbed
by the great problems of human life and immortality.  With different
degrees of greatness and fruitfulness, they all serve the same cause.
Whether as defenders or assailants of Jansenism and Quietism, the
solitary philosopher or the prelates engaged in the court or in the
guidance of men, all three of them serving God on behalf of the soul's
highest interests, remained unique in their generation, and without
successors as they had been without predecessors.

Leaving the desert and the church, and once more entering the world, we
immediately encounter, amongst women, one, and one only, in the first
rank--Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marchioness of Sevigne, born at Paris on
the 5th of February, 1627, five months before Bossuet.  Like a
considerable number of women in Italy in the sixteenth century, and in
France in the seventeenth, she had received a careful education.  She
knew Italian, Latin, and Spanish; she had for masters Menage and
Chapelain; and she early imbibed a real taste for solid reading, which
she owed to her leaning towards the Jansenists and Port-Royal.  She was
left a widow at five and twenty by the death of a very indifferent
husband, and she was not disposed to make a second venture.  Before
getting killed in a duel, M. de Sevigne had made a considerable gap in
the property of his wife, who, however, had brought him more than five
hundred thousand livres.  Madame de Sevigne had two children: she made up
her mind to devote herself to their education, to restore their fortune,
and to keep her love for them and for her friends.  Of them she had many,
often very deeply smitten with her; all remained faithful to her, and,
she deserted none of them, though they might be put on trial and
condemned like Fouquet, or perfidious and cruel like her cousin M. de
Bussy-Rabutin.  The safest and most agreeable of acquaintances, ever
ready to take part in the joys as well as the anxieties of those whom she
honored with her friendship, without permitting this somewhat superficial
sympathy to agitate the depths of her heart, she had during her life but
one veritable passion, which she admitted nobody to share with her.  Her
daughter, Madame de Grignan, the prettiest girl in France, clever,
virtuous, business-like, appears in her mother's letters fitful,
cross-grained, and sometimes rather cold.  Madame de Sevigne is a friend
whom we read over and over again, whose emotions we share, to whom we go
for an hour's distraction and delightful chat.  We have no desire to chat
with Madame de Grignan; we gladly leave her to her mother's exclusive
affection, feeling infinitely obliged to her, however, for having
existed, inasmuch as her mother wrote letters to her.  Madame de
Sevigne's letters to her daughter are superior to all her other letters,
charming as they are.  When she writes to M. de Pomponne, to M. de
Coulanges, to M. de Bussy, the style is less familiar, the heart less
open, the soul less stirred.  She writes to her daughter as she would
speak to her; it is not letters, it is an animated and charming
conversation, touching upon everything, embellishing everything with an
inimitable grace.  She gave her daughter in marriage to Count de Grignan
in January, 1669; next year her son-in-law was appointed lieutenant-
general of the king in Provence; he was to fill the place there of the
Duke of Vendome, too young to discharge his functions as governor.  In
the month of January, 1671, M. de Grignan removed his wife to Aix: he was
a Provencal, he was fond of his province, his castle of Grignan, and his
wife.  Madame de Sevigne found herself condemned to separation from the
daughter whom she loved exclusively.  "In vain I seek my darling
daughter; I can no longer find her, and every step she takes removes her
farther from me.  I went to St. Mary's, still weeping and still dying of
grief; it seemed as if my heart and my soul were being wrenched from me;
and, in truth, what a cruel separation!  I asked leave to be alone: I was
taken into Madame du Housset's room, and they made me up a fire.  Agnes
sat looking at me without speaking: that was our bargain.  I staid there
till five o'clock, without ceasing to sob: all my thoughts were mortal,
wounds to me.  I wrote to M. de Grignan, you can imagine in what key.
Then I went to Madame de La Fayette's, who redoubled my griefs by the
interest she took in them.  She was alone, ill and distressed at the
death of one of the nuns; she was just as I could have desired.  I
returned hither at eight; but when I came in, O! can you conceive what I
felt as I mounted these stairs?  That room into which I used always to
go, alas!  I found the doors of it open, but I saw everything
disfurnished, everything disarranged, and your little daughter, who
reminded me of mine.  The wakenings of the night were dreadful; I think
of you continuously: it is what devotees call an habitual thought, such
as one should have of God, if one did one's duty.  Nothing gives me any
distraction.  I see that carriage, which is forever going on and will
never come near me.  I am forever on the highways; it seems as if I were
afraid sometimes that the carriage will upset with me.  The rains there
have been for the last three days reduce me to despair; the Rhone causes
me strange alarm.  I have a map before my eyes, I know all the places
where you sleep.  This evening you are at Nevers; on Sunday you will be
at Lyons, where you will receive this letter.  I have received only two
of yours; perhaps the third will come; that is the only comfort I desire:
as for others, I seek for none."  During five and twenty years Madame de
Sevign~ could never become accustomed to her daughter's absence.  She set
out for the Rochers, near Vitry, a family estate of M. de Sevigne's.  Her
friend the Duke of Chaulnes was governor of Brittany.  "You shall now
have news of our states as your penalty for being a Breton.  M. de
Chaulnes arrived on Sunday evening, to the sound of everything that can
make any in Vitry.  On Monday morning he sent me a letter; I wrote back
to say that I would go and dine with him.  There are two dining-tables in
the same room; fourteen covers at each table.  Monsieur presides at one,
Madame at the other.  The good cheer is prodigious; joints are carried
away quite untouched, and as for the pyramids of fruit, the doors require
to be heightened.  Our fathers did not foresee this sort of machine,
indeed they did not even foresee that a door required to be higher than
themselves.  Well, a pyramid wants to come in, one of those pyramids
which make everybody exclaim from one end of the table to the other; but
so far from that boding damage, people are often, on the contrary, very
glad not to see any more of what they contain.  This pyramid, then, with
twenty or thirty porcelain dishes, was so completely upset at the door,
that the noise it made put to silence the violins, hautbois, and
trumpets.  After dinner, M. de Locmaria and M. de Coetlogon danced with
two fair Bretons some marvellous jigs (passe pipds) and some minuets in a
style that the court-people cannot approach; wherein they do the Bohemian
and Breton step with a neatness and correctness which are charming.  I
was thinking all the while of you, and I had such tender recollections of
your dancing and of what I had seen you dance, that this pleasure became
a pain to me.  The States are sure not to be long; there is nothing to do
but to ask for what the king wants; nobody says a word, and it is all
done.  As for the governor, he finds, somehow or other, more than forty
thousand crowns coming in to him.  An infinity of presents, pensions,
repairs of roads and towns, fifteen or twenty grand dinner-parties,
incessant play, eternal balls, comedies three times a week, a great show
of dress, that is the States.  I am forgetting three or four hundred
pipes of wine which are drunk; but, if I did not reckon this little item,
the others do not forget it, and put it first.  This is what is called
the sort of twaddle to make one go to sleep on one's feet; but it is what
comes to the tip of your pen when you are in Brittany and have nothing
else to say."

Even in Brittany and at the Rochers, Madame de Sevigne always has
something to say.  The weather is frightful; she is occupied a good deal
in reading the romances of La Calprenede and the _Grand Cyrus,_ as well
as the _Ethics_ of Nicole.  "For four days it has been one continuous
tempest; all our walks are drowned; there is no getting out any more.
Our masons, our carpenters keep their rooms; in short, I hate this
country, and I yearn every moment for your sun; perhaps you yearn for my
rain; we do well, both of us.  I am going on with the _Ethics_ of Nicole,
which I find delightful; it has not yet given me any lesson against the
rain, but I am expecting it, for I find everything there, and conformity
to the will of God might answer my purpose, if I did not want a specific
remedy.  In fact, I consider this an admirable book; nobody has written
as these gentlemen have, for I put down to Pascal half of all that is
beautiful.  It is so nice to have one's self and one's feelings talked
about, that, though it be in bad part, one is charmed by it.  What is
called searching the depths of the heart with a lantern is exactly what
he does; he discloses to us that which we feel every day, but have not
the wit to discern or the sincerity to avow.  I have even forgiven the
swelling in the heart (_l'enflure du coeur_) for the sake of the rest,
and I maintain that there is no other word to express vanity and pride,
which are really wind: try and find another word.  I shall complete the
reading of this with pleasure."

Here we have the real Madame de Sevigne, whom we love, on whom we rely,
who is as earnest as she is amiable and gay, who goes to the very core of
things, and who tells the truth of herself as well as of others.  "You
ask me, my dear child, whether I continue to be really fond of life.  I
confess to you that I find poignant sorrows in it, but I am even more
disgusted with death; I feel so wretched at having to end all this
thereby, that, if I could turn back again, I would ask for nothing
better.  I find myself under an obligation which perplexes me: I embarked
upon life without my consent, and I must go out of it; that overwhelms
me.  And how shall I go?  Which way?  By what door?  When will it be?
In what condition?  Shall I suffer a thousand, thousand pains, which will
make me die desperate?  Shall I have brain-fever?  Shall I die of an
accident?  How shall I be with God?  What shall I have to show Him?
Shall fear, shall necessity bring me back to Him?  Shall I have no
sentiment but that of dread?  What can I hope?  Am I worthy of heaven?
Am I worthy of hell?  Nothing is such madness as to leave one's salvation
in uncertainty, but nothing is so natural; and the stupid life I lead is
the easiest thing in the world to understand.  I bury myself in these
thoughts, and I find death so terrible, that I hate life more because it
leads me thereto than because of the thorns with which it is planted.
You will say that I want to live forever then: not at all; but, if my
opinion had been asked, I should have preferred to die in my nurse's
arms; that would have removed me from vexations of spirit, and would have
given me Heaven full surely and easily."

Madame de Sevigne would have very much scandalized those gentlemen of
Port-Royal, if she had let them see into the bottom of her heart as she
showed it to her daughter.  Pascal used to say, "There are but three
sorts of persons: those who serve God, having found Him; those who employ
themselves in seeking Him, not having found Him; and those who live
without seeking Him or having found Him.  The first are reasonable and
happy; the last are mad and miserable; the intermediate are miserable and
reasonable."  Without ever having sought and found God, in the absolute
sense intended by Pascal, Madame de Sevigne kept approaching Him by
gentle degrees.  "We are reading a treatise by M. Namon of Port-Royal on
continuous prayer; though he is a hundred feet above my head, he
nevertheless pleases and charms us.  One is very glad to see that there
have been and still are in the world people to whom God communicates His
Holy Spirit in such abundance; but, O God!  when shall we have some
spark, some degree of it?  How sad to find one's self so far from it, and
so near to something else!  O, fie!  Let us not speak of such plight as
that: it calls for sighs, and groans, and humiliations a hundred times a
day."

After having suffered so much from separation, and so often traversed
France to visit her daughter in Provence, Madame de Sevigne had the
happiness to die in her house at Grignan.  She was sixty-nine, and she
had been ill for some time; she was subject to rheumatism; her son's
wildness had for a long while retarded the arrangement of her affairs;
at last he had turned over a new leaf, he was married, he was a devotee.
Madame de Grignan had likewise found a wife for her son, whom the king
had made a colonel at a very early age; and a husband for her daughter,
little Pauline, now Madame de Simiane.  "All this together is extremely
nice, and too nice," wrote Madame de Sevigne to M. de Bussy, "for I find
the days going so fast, and the months and the years, that, for my part,
my dear cousin, I can no longer hold them.  Time flies, and carries me
along in spite of me; it is all very fine for me to wish to stay it, it
bears me away with it, and the idea of this causes me great fear; you
will make a pretty shrewd guess why."  Death came at last, and Madame de
Sevigne lost all her terrors.  She was attacked by small-pox whilst her
sick daughter was confined to her bed, and died on the 19th of April,
1696, thanking God that she was the first to go, after having so often
trembled for her daughter's health.  "What calls far more for our
admiration than for our regrets," writes M. de Grignan to M. de
Coulanges, "is the spectacle of a brave woman facing death, of which she
had no doubt from the first days of her illness, with astounding firmness
and submission.  This person, so tender and so weak towards all that she
loved, showed nothing but courage and piety when she believed that her
hour was come; and we could not but remark of what utility and of what
importance it is to have the mind stocked with good matter and holy
reading, for the which Madame de Sevigne had a liking, not to say a
wonderful hungering, from the use she managed to make of that good store
in the last moments of her life."  She had often taken her daughter to
task for not being fond of books. "There is a certain person who
undoubtedly has plenty of wits, but of so nice and so fastidious a sort,
that she cannot read anything but five or six sublime works, which is a
sign of distinguished taste.  She cannot bear historical books; a great
deprivation this, and of that which is a subsistence to everybody else.
She has another misfortune, which is, that she cannot read twice over
those choice books which she esteems exclusively.  This person says that
she is insulted when she is told that she is not fond of reading: another
bone to pick."  Madame de Sevigne's liking for good books accompanied her
to the last, and helped her to make a good end.

All the women who had been writers in her time died before Madame de
Sevigne.  Madame de Motteville, a judicious and sensible woman, more
independent at the bottom of her heart than in externals, had died in
1689, exclusively occupied, from the time that she lost Queen Anne of
Austria, in works of piety and in drawing up her _Memoires_.  Mdlle. de
Montpensier, "my great Mademoiselle," as Madame de Sevigne used to call
her, had died at Paris on the 5th of April, 1693, after a violent
illness, as feverish as her life.  Impassioned and haughty, with her head
so full of her greatness that she did not marry in her youth, thinking
nobody worthy of her except the king and the emperor, who had no fancy
for her, and ending by a private marriage with the Duke of Lauzun, "a
cadet of Gascony," whom the king would not permit her to espouse
publicly; clever, courageous, hare-brained, generous, she has herself
sketched her own portrait.  "I am tall, neither fat nor thin, of a very
fine and easy figure.  I have a good mien, arms and hands not beautiful,
but a beautiful skin and throat too.  I have a straight leg and a
well-shaped foot; my hair is light, and of a beautiful auburn; my face is
long, its contour is handsome, nose large and aquiline; mouth neither
large nor small, but chiselled, and with a very pleasing expression; lips
vermilion; teeth not fine, but not frightful either.  My eyes are blue,
neither large nor small, but sparkling, soft, and proud, like my mien.  I
talk a great deal, without saying silly things or using bad words.  I am
a very vicious enemy, being very choleric and passionate, and that, added
to my birth, may well make my enemies tremble; but I have also a noble
and a kindly soul.  I am incapable of any base and black deed; and so I
am more disposed to mercy than to justice.  I am melancholic; I like
reading good and solid books; trifles bore me, except verses, and them I
like, of whatever sort they may be, and undoubtedly I am as good a judge
of such things as if I were a scholar."

A few days after Mademoiselle, died, likewise at Paris, Madelaine de la
Vergne, Marchioness of La Fayette, the most intimate friend of Madame de
Sevigne.  "Never did we have the smallest cloud upon our friendship," the
latter would say; "long habit had not made her merit stale to me, the
flavor of it was always fresh and new; I paid her many attentions from
the mere prompting of my heart, without the propriety to which we are
bound by friendship having anything to do with it.  I was assured, too,
that I constituted her dearest consolation, and for forty years past it
had always been the same thing."  Sensible, clever, a sweet and safe
acquaintance, Madame de La Fayette was as simple and as true in her
relations with her confidantes as in her writings.  La Princesse de
Olives alone has outlived the times and the friends of Madame de La
Fayette.  Following upon the "great sword-thrusts" of La Calprenede or
Mdlle. de Scudery, this delicate, elegant, and virtuous tale, with its
pure and refined style, enchanted the court, which recognized itself at
its best, and painted under its brightest aspect; it was farewell forever
to the "Pays de Tendre."  Madame de La Fayette had very bad health; she
wrote to Madame de Sevigne on the 14th of July, 1693, "Here is what I
have done since I wrote to you last.  I have had two attacks of fever;
for six months I had not been purged; I am purged once, I am purged
twice; the day after the second time, I sit down to table.  O, dear!
I feel a pain in my heart; I do not want any soup.  Have a little meat
then.  No, I do not want any.  Well, you will have some fruit.  I think I
will.  Very well, then, have some.  I don't know, I think I will have
something by and by; let me have some soup and a chicken this evening.
Here is the evening, and there are the soup and the chicken: I don't want
them.  I am nauseated; I will go to bed; I prefer sleeping to eating.  I
go to bed, I turn round, I turn back, I have no pain, but I have no sleep
either.  I call, I take a book, I shut it up.  Day comes, I get up, I go
to the window.  It strikes four, five, six; I go to bed again, I doze
till seven, I get up at eight, I sit down to table at twelve, to no
purpose, as yesterday.  I lay myself down in my bed again in the evening,
to no purpose, as the night before.  Are you ill?  Nay.  I am in this
state for three days and three nights.  At present I am getting some
sleep again, but I still eat merely mechanically, horse-wise, rubbing my
mouth with vinegar otherwise I am very well, and I haven't even so much
pain in the head."  Fault was found with Madame de La Fayette for not