No one would have ventured to say, 'I do as he does. That which no one ventured to imitate, was respected in him, as the pagan sages adored a corrupt and adulterous Jove." He who had carried off a wife from her husband,*-boldly undertook to rebuke those who did not live regularly. No one seemed to contest his right to do this, or, if they did, it was so quietly that nothing has come down to us of it, and in the meantime, they obeyed. Moreover, it was no uncommon thing for a father, or a husband, or a wife to come to him begging him to administer a rebuke to a reckless son, or an unfaithful husband, or a fickle wife. And these things took place not in his old age, or even in his riper years; before he had reached the age of thirty, in the midst of his irregularities, we already see him playing this part; it only required a word or a look from him, in order to the exercise of all that authority of which his vices had seemed to deprive him.

Thus, the Abbé Fénélon had only shared in the almost universal impression; few men in France, were capable of escaping so completely as his uncle had done from the magic influence of the king. He hastened to renew his promise that he would refrain from presenting himself to Madame de Montespan.

"And the other?" inquired the Marquis.

"The other?"

"Yes, Madame de la Vallière."t

*"With the frightful commotion, which resounded horribly in the ears of nations," say the memoirs of St. Simon. One would wish, for the credit of morals, that this were true, but historically it is false. We do not see that there was either fright or horror, there was not even much astonishment, for men's minds were prepared for anything. "Do you know me?" said the Marquise, one day to a peasant who saluted her. "O yes, Madame; is it not you who have the situation of Madame de la Vallière ?" The poor man intended no malice, but his expression was perfectly correct. The place of mistress to the king, was as much one of the court situations, as that of equerry or confessor.

+ Madame, since the king had made her Duchess of Vaujour.

66

They say she is still decided to take the veil."

"Yes, so it is. When the world will have no more of you, you give yourself to God.”

"You are severe, uncle. It appears that her conversion is sincere. Monsieur de Condom, (Bossuet, then bishop of Condom,) is convinced of it, and you know, that for some time past, he has seen a great deal of her."

"He is good security. And then there is pardon for all sin. Apropos, is Monsieur de Condom here?"

"Yes, since the day before yesterday. He returned with the dauphin."

"I have received a letter in which he is mentioned, and I wish to show it to him."

"A letter ?"

"From M. Arnauld."

"From M. Arnauld! Take care. Already they are not on the best terms."

"And a great pity it is. This letter will probably not reconcile them,—but neither do I believe that it will further divide them. And Father Bourdaloue?"

The Abbé was surprised that his uncle had not spoken of him until this moment. Never before had Jansenist so loved Jesuit, as M. de Fénélon loved Bourdaloue.* The latter, to be sure, was scarcely a Jesuit, save in name and dress. enemies of his order paid homage, not only to his talent, which it would have been ridiculous to deny, but to his virtues, his gen

The most active

* Except perhaps Boileau. The satirist was very proud of the friendship of the great orator.

"Enfin, après Arnauld, ce fut l'illustre de France,

Que j'estimai le plus, et qui m'aima le mieux.”

This "après Arnauld” is a little like a confession of faith. Arnauld, like Bossuet, never had more than a cold esteem for Boileau.

tle and amiable qualities; the Port Royal Jesuit, as he was called, had few enemies, save among the members of his own fraternity. The intellect of M. de Fénélon was as exacting, as his heart was pure and honest; thus Bourdaloue the reasoner suited him as well as Bourdaloue the moralist and Christian.

"To-morrow is

"You will hear him," answered the Abbé. Good Friday, and he is to preach before the king."

"I know it, I know it, and for that reason I have come to Versailles eight days sooner than I would have otherwise done. You laugh? Well, yes,-I love him."

"I love him also, uncle,-I also;-only I love him a little less than you do."

"A little!"

"You would prefer me to say much?”

"Say it if you think it."

"Here is our old quarrel about to begin again! I have,

however, attended his preaching during the whole of this Lent."

"Well ?"

"I appreciate him better."

"That is very fortunate !" "Yes, but "

"Ah! always a but ?”

"Always, I am sorry to say. I can but repeat to you what I have already said of his faults-"

"He will not abandon them!"

"My dear uncle, I am serious. If his Majesty should command me to think otherwise, I could not-"

"Stop, stop! you know I do not like that phrase. His Majesty has nothing to do with the matter."

This was, in fact, one of the phrases which adulation had invented, in order delicately to give the king the highest idea of his own power; it was equivalent to saying that all was in his

power excepting the impossible. Even the impossible seemed, however, sometimes included; for example, Molière:—

Unless a mandate from the king should come,

To make these verses good.

If the mandate arrived, then the verses would be good! It is undoubtedly a pleasantry, but in the mouth of the misanthrope, these words are almost equivalent to a serious assertion.

"Well," said the Abbé, "let us then speak without figure. You will not, I think, any more than the king, order me to change my opinion. No,-his is not the kind of preaching that I like. I want less system and more life, fewer reasons and more"Fewer reasons! As if it were possible to have too many!" "No, but it is possible to give too many. Let the preacher possess thoroughly the proofs of his doctrines,―the philosophical principles of morals,—that is all very well; let him allow his science to be perceived, and give here and there specimens of it, -that also is very well, but something else is required in the pulpit. All this may serve to convince, but it is persuasion which is needed.

'But in order to persuade, you must first convince.'

So said the ancient rhetoricians; and as they scarcely had anything in view save legal discussions, they were right. But, uncle, is that what we want? If we have another end in view, must the choice of our means remain subjected to the same rules? The end, that is the great thing. We wish to touch, to regenerate, to save, we cannot save by reasoning!"

He went too far; but why should we be astonished, that at twenty-four he clothed in language somewhat exaggerated, the oratorical system which he always professed a little too absolutely? We shall have to return to this in the course of our his

tory; let us confine ourselves at present to the remark, that man is neither all head nor all heart; and that the christian orator ought, in consequence, neither to neglect the heart for the head, nor the head for the heart. Bourdaloue addressed himself too exclusively to the intellect. Fénélon fell into the other extreme, and it is, therefore, that he secretly made a rule that he would never write his sermons. It is true that he lost less by it than any one else would have done; the abundance of his ideas,--the astonishing facility of his elocution, the force of his character, all this contributed, with him, to diminish the evils of this method, but it was no reason why he should insist upon advising all to follow a method, good at the furthest for himself and a few other men of remarkable talent. Let us however, add, for the sake of justice, that it is an error which honors him; less really modest, he would have been less peremptory ;* he would have comprehended better than any one else, that it was folly to exact from all orators, that which could be done by himself.

There was, however, a great deal of justice in this manner of regarding the eloquence of the pulpit. "We cannot save by reasoning," he had just remarked; and truly enough, the more the human heart is studied,-provided it be not rhetorically studied, the more one is astonished to see how really feeble are these arms forged by the vulcans of logic with a great noise. If we are called upon to use them, we fancy them invincible. If it be against us that they are employed, we scarcely feel the shock. Many an orator imagines himself striking a terrible blow in employing an argument, which he himself may have heard twenty times, without experiencing the slightest emotion.

* See his dialogues on eloquence, written about this epoch. In the second, particularly, in speaking of improvisation,-it is his own portrait which he traces