II.
At Paris, Madame Guyon became the centre of a small but illustrious circle, who listened with delight to her exposition of that Quietism to which the tender earnestness of her language, and her manner lent so indescribable a charm. There were the Duke and Duchess of Beauvilliers, the Duke and Duchess of Chevreuse, the Duchess of Bethune, and the Countess of Guiche. The daughters of Colbert and of Fouquet forgot the long enmity of their fathers in a religious friendship, whose tie was yet more closely drawn by their common admiration for Madame Guyon.[[339]] But letters filled with complaints against La Combe and Madame Guyon poured in upon Harlay, Archbishop of Paris.[[340]] He procured the arrest of La Combe, who spent the remainder of his days in various prisons. A little calumny and a forged letter obtained from the king a lettre de cachet confining Madame Guyon to an apartment in the Convent of St. Marie. The sisters were strongly prejudiced against her, but her gentle patience won all hearts, and her fair jailors soon vied with each other in praises of their fascinating prisoner. An examination elicited nothing decidedly unfavourable. Not a stain could be detected in her character; she offered to submit all her papers and her writings to investigation. The intercession of Madame Miramion and other friends with Madame de Maintenon, procured her release, after a captivity of eight months.
The most dangerous enemy Madame Guyon had as yet was her own half-brother, Père La Mothe. He had calumniated her in secret while in Switzerland; he was still more active now she was in Paris. He wished to become her Director, but La Combe was in the way. The artifices of La Mothe procured his arrest. He advised Madame Guyon, with hypocritical protestations of friendship, to flee to Montargis from the scandalous reports he himself had circulated, and from adversaries he himself had raised up. Then she would have been at his mercy—he would have pointed to her flight as a proof of guilt, and her own property and the guardianship of her children might have been secured for himself. He injured her as a relation only could. People said her cause must be a bad one, since her own brother was constrained, from regard to the credit of religion, to bear witness against her. A woman who had committed sacrilege at Lyons, and had run away from the Convent of Penitents at Dijon, was employed by him to forge letters which should damage the character of Madame Guyon; to personate one of her maids, and to go from confessor to confessor throughout Paris, asserting that after living sixteen or seventeen years with her mistress, she had quitted her at last, in disgust at her abominable life.
III.
Released from the Convent of St. Marie, Madame Guyon was conducted by her court friends to express her thanks to Madame de Maintenon at St. Cyr. This institution had been founded, ten years previously, for the education of the daughters of noble but impoverished families. The idea originated with Madame de Maintenon: it was executed with royal speed and magnificence by Louis, and St. Cyr became her favourite resort. In fifteen months two thousand six hundred workmen raised the structure, on a marshy soil, about half a league from Paris. The genius of Mansart presided over the architecture. The style of the ordinances was revised by Boileau and Racine. There three hundred young ladies of rank, dressed in gowns of brown crape, with white quilted caps, tied with ribbons whose colour indicated the class to which they belonged in the school, studied geography and drawing, heard mass, sang in the choir, and listened to preachments from the lips of Madame Brinon—who discoursed, so swore some of the courtiers, as eloquently as Bourdaloue himself. Tired out with the formal splendours of Versailles, Madame de Maintenon was never so happy as when playing the part of lady abbess at St. Cyr. Often she would be there by six in the morning, would herself assist at the toilette of the pupils, would take a class throughout the day, would give the novices lessons on spiritual experience; nothing in its routine was dull, nothing in its kitchen was mean. She hated Fontainebleau, for it tore her from her family at St. Cyr. For the private theatricals of St. Cyr, Racine wrote Esther, at the request of Madame de Maintenon. Happy was the courtier who could obtain permission to witness one of these representations, who could tell with triumph to envious groups of the excluded, what an admirable Ahasuerus Madame de Caylus made, what a spirited Mordecai was Mademoiselle de Glapion, how the graceful Mademoiselle de Veillenne charmed the audience in the prayer of Esther—in short, how far the Esther surpassed the Phedra; and the actresses excelled the Raisins and the Chammelés of the Parisian boards. Louis himself drew up the list of admissions, as though it were for a journey to Marly—he was the first to enter—and stood at the door, with the catalogue of names in one hand and his cane held across as a barrier in the other, till all the privileged had entered.[[341]] But the fashion of asceticism which grew with every year of Maintenon’s reign threw its gloom over St. Cyr. The absolute vows were introduced, and much of the monotonous austerity of conventual life. Religious excitement was the only resource left to the inmates if they would not die of ennui. This relief was brought them by Madame Guyon.
Madame de Maintenon was touched with pity for the misfortunes of Madame Guyon, with admiration for such patience, such forgetfulness of self,—she found in the freshness and fervour of her religious conversation, a charm which recalled the warmer feelings of youth; which was welcome, for its elevation, after the fatigue and anxiety of state, for its sweetness, as contrasted with the barren minutiæ of rigid formalism. She invited her constantly to her table—she encouraged her visits to St. Cyr—she met with her, and with Fénélon, at the Hôtels de Chevreuse and Beauvilliers, where a religious coterie assembled three times a week to discuss the mysteries of inward experience. Thus, during three or four years of favour with Madame de Maintenon, Madame Guyon became in effect the spiritual instructress of St. Cyr, and found herself at Paris surrounded by disciples whose numbers daily increased, and whom she withdrew from the licentious gaieties of the capital. At St. Cyr the young ladies studied her books, and listened to her as an oracle—the thoughtless grew serious—the religious strained every faculty to imitate the attainments of one in whom they saw the ideal of devotion. In Paris, mystical terminology became the fashionable language—it was caught up and glibly uttered by wits and roués—it melted from the lips of beauties who shot languishing glances at their admirers, while they affected to be weary of the world, and who coquetted while they talked significantly of holy indifference or pure love. Libertines, like Treville, professed reform, and wrote about mysticism,—atheists turned Christians, like Corbinelli, now became Quietists, and might be seen in the salon of Madame le Maigre, where Corbinelli shone, the brilliant expositor of the new religious romanticism.[[342]]
IV.
During this period, Madame Guyon became acquainted with Fénélon. At their first interview she was all admiration, he all distrust. ‘Her mind,’ she says, ‘had been taken up with him with much force and sweetness;’ it seemed to be revealed to her that he should become one of her spiritual children. Fénélon, on his part, thought she had neglected her duty to her family for an imaginary mission. But he had inquired concerning her life at Montargis, and heard only praise. After a few conversations his doubts vanished: he had proposed objections, requested explanations, pointed out unguarded expressions in her books—she was modest, submissive, irresistible.[[343]] There was a power in her language, her manner, her surviving beauty, which mysteriously dissipated prejudice; which even Nicole, Bossuet, Boileau, Gaillard, could not withstand when they conversed with her,—which was only overcome when they had ceased to behold her face, when her persuasive accents sounded no longer in their ears. She recalled to the thoughts of Fénélon his youthful studies at St. Sulpice;—there he had perused the mystical divines in dusty tomes, clasped and brazen-cornered,—now he beheld their buried doctrine raised to life in the busy present, animating the untaught eloquence of a woman, whom a noble enthusiasm alone had endowed with all the prerogatives of genius, and all the charms of beauty. This friendship, which events rendered afterwards so disastrous for himself, was beneficial to Madame Guyon. Fénélon taught her to moderate some of her spiritual excesses. Her extravagance reached its culminating point at Thonon. At Paris, influenced doubtless by Fénélon, as well as by more frequent intercourse with the world, she no longer enjoys so many picturesque dreams, no more heals the sick and casts out devils with a word, and no longer—as in her solitude there—suffers inward anguish consequent on the particular religious condition of Father La Combe when he is three hundred miles off.[[344]] It is curious to observe how the acquaintance of Fénélon with Madame Guyon began with suspicion and ripened into friendship, while that of Bossuet, commencing with approval, and even admiration, ended in calumny and persecution. Bossuet declared to the Duc de Chevreuse that while examining her writings, for the first time, he was astonished by a light and unction he had never before seen, and, for three days, was made to realize the divine Presence in a manner altogether new. Bossuet had never, like Fénélon, studied the mystics.[[345]]
V.
The two most influential Directors at St. Cyr were Godet des Marais, Bishop of Chartres, and Fénélon. These two men form a striking contrast. Godet was disgusting in person and in manners—a sour ascetic—a spiritual martinet—devoted to all the petty austerities of the most formal discipline. Fénélon was dignified and gentle, graceful as a courtier, and spotless as a saint—the most pure, the most persuasive, the most accomplished of religious guides. No wonder that most of the young inmates of St. Cyr adored Fénélon, and could not endure Godet. Madame de Maintenon wavered between her two confessors; if Fénélon was the more agreeable, Godet seemed the more safe. Godet was miserably jealous of his rival. He was not sorry to find that the new doctrines had produced a little insubordination within the quiet walls of St. Cyr—that Fénélon would be compromised by the indiscretion of some among his youthful admirers. He brought a lamentable tale to Madame de Maintenon. Madame du Peron, the mistress of the novices, had complained that her pupils obeyed her no longer. They neglected regular duties for unseasonable prayers. They had illuminations and ecstasies. One in the midst of sweeping her room would stand, leaning on her broom, lost in contemplation: another, instead of hearing lessons, became inspired, and resigned herself to the operation of the Spirit. The under-mistress of the classes stole away the enlightened from the rest, and they were found in remote corners of the house, feasting in secret on the sweet poison of Madame Guyon’s doctrine. The precise and methodical Madame de Maintenon was horrified. She had hoped to realize in her institute the ideal of her Church, a perfect uniformity of opinion, an unerring mechanism of obedience. We wished, said she, to promote intelligence, we have made orators; devotion, we have made Quietists; modesty, we have made prudes; elevation of sentiment, and we have pride. She commissioned Godet to reclaim the wanderers, to demand that the books of Madame Guyon should be surrendered, setting herself the example by publicly delivering into his hand her own copy of the Short Method. She requested Madame Guyon to refrain from visiting St. Cyr. She began to doubt the prudence or the orthodoxy of Fénélon.[[346]] What would the king say, if he heard of it—he, who had never liked Fénélon—who hated nothing so much as heresy—who had but the other day extinguished the Quietism of Molinos? She had read to him some of Madame Guyon’s exposition of the Canticles; and he called it dreamy stuff. Doctrines really dangerous to purity were insinuated by some designing monks, under the name of Quietism. The odium fell on the innocent Madame Guyon; and her friends would necessarily share it. Malicious voices charged her with corrupting the principles of the Parisian ladies. Madame Guyon replied with justice,—‘When they were patching, and painting, and ruining their families by gambling and by dress, not a word was said against it; now that they have withdrawn from such vanities, the cry is, that I have ruined them.’ Rumour grew more loud and scandalous every day: the most incredible reports were most credited. The schools, too, had taken up the question of mysticism, and argued it with heat. Nicole and Lami had dissolved an ancient friendship to quarrel about it,—as Fénélon and Bossuet were soon to do. No controversy threatened to involve so many interests, to fan so many passions, to kindle so many hatreds, as this variance about disinterestedness, about indifference, about love.