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 Sevigne 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 pipeds) 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.”