Madame Guyon was banished to a nunnery, which was a bastile arranged for ladies. For two years she was kept under lock and key. The authorities, however, relaxed their severities, not realizing that she was really more dangerous than Father La Combe.
Priests are apt to deal gently with beautiful women. From her prison Madame Guyon managed to get a letter to Fenelon, Bishop of Cambray. She asked for a hearing and that her case be passed upon by a tribunal. Fenelon referred the letter to Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux, recommending that the woman be given a hearing and judgment rendered as to the extent of her heresy. By a singular fatality Bossuet appointed Fenelon as chairman or chief inquisitor of the committee to investigate the vagaries and conduct of the Madame.
Bossuet, himself, became interested in the woman. He went to see her in prison, and her beauty, her intellect, her devotion, appealed to him.
Bossuet was an orator, the greatest in France at that time. His only rival was Fenelon, but the style and manner of the men were so different that they really played off against each other as foils.
Bossuet was vehement, powerful—what we would call "Western." Fenelon was suave, gentle, and won by an appeal to the highest and best in the hearts of his hearers. Father La Combe and Fenelon were very much alike, only Father La Combe had occupied a local position, while that of Fenelon was national. Fenelon was a diplomat, an author, an orator.
Madame Guyon's autobiography reveals the fact that Bossuet was enough interested in her case to have her removed to a nunnery near where he lived, and there he often called upon her. He read to her from his own writings, instead of analyzing hers, which proves priests to be simply men at the last. Bossuet needed the feminine mind to bolster his own, but Madame and he did not mix. In her autobiography she hesitates about actually condemning Bossuet, but describes him as short and fat, so it looks as if she were human, too, since what repelled her were his physical characteristics.
When a woman describes a man she always begins by telling how he looks.
Madame Guyon says: "The Bishop of Meaux wished me to change my name, so that, as he said, it should not be known I was in his diocese, and that people should not torment him on my account. The project was the finest in the world, if he could have kept a secret; but he told everybody he saw that I was in such a convent, under such a name. Immediately, from all sides, anonymous libels against me were sent to the Mother Superior and the nuns."
With Fenelon, it was very different. Her heart went out to him: he was the greatest man she had ever seen—greater even than Father La Combe.
Fenelon's first interview with Madame Guyon was simply in an official way, but her interest in him was very personal. This is evidenced from her brief, but very fervent, mention of the incident: