This touching engagement upon honor by a boy under ten years of age was made in the first year of Fénelon's charge over him. He had already begun to make some progress, in spite of a disposition the ugliness of which had been previously set down as incorrigible.
The tutor had determined to master his pupil's rudeness, as an indispensable condition of any improvement, moral or literary.
One day he had recourse to a stratagem that might present his conduct to him in a new light. The young duke stopped one morning to examine the tools of a carpenter, who had been summoned to do some work in his apartment. The man, who had learned his part from Fénelon, told him in the roughest manner possible to go about his business. The prince, little accustomed to hear such language, began to resent it; but was interrupted by the workman, who, raising his voice and trembling with rage from head to foot, screamed to him to get beyond his reach. "I am a man," cried he, "who, when my temper is roused, think nothing of breaking the head of any person that crosses me." The prince, frightened beyond measure, ran to his master to tell him that a crazy man had been allowed to come into the palace. "He is a poor laborer," said Fénelon coldly, "whose only fault is giving signs of violent anger." "But he is a bad man," cried the boy, "and must leave my apartment." "He is worthy of pity rather than punishment," added his tutor. "You are surprised at his being angry because you disturbed him at his work; what would you say now of a prince who beats his valet at the very time that he is trying to do him a service?"
On another occasion the young man, piqued by the tone of severity which his tutor had found it necessary to assume, answered him in the most arrogant manner, "I will not allow you, sir, to command me; I know what I am, and I know what you are." Fénelon answered not a word; for remonstrance or reproof would have been useless. He determined, however, to give his pupil a lesson he should not easily forget. For the rest of that day he did not speak to him, his sadness alone evincing his displeasure. On the following morning he entered the duke's chamber immediately after his being awakened. "I do not know, sir," said he to his pupil with cold and distant respect, "if you recollect what you told me yesterday, namely, that you knew who you are and who I am. It is my duty to make you understand that you know neither one nor the other. You fancy then, sir, that you are more than I. Some lackey may have told you so; but I hesitate not, as you force me to it, to tell you that I am far above you. There is no question here of birth, which adds nothing to your personal merit. You cannot pretend to surpass me in wisdom. You know nothing but what I have taught you, and that is nothing compared with what remains for you to learn. As to power, you have none whatever over me; but I have authority full and entire over you. The king and monseigneur the dauphin have told you so often enough. You may think that I consider it a great thing to hold the situation I fill near your person. Let me tell you that you are altogether mistaken. I have accepted it only to obey the king and to please monseigneur, not certainly for the painful advantage of being your preceptor. To convince you of all I have said, I am about to lead you to his majesty, and to beg him to give you some other tutor, who will meet, I hope, with more consoling success than I have."
This speech threw the prince into the greatest consternation. "O my master!" he exclaimed, bursting into tears, "if you abandon me, what will become of me? Do not make the king my enemy for life. Forgive me for what I said yesterday, and I promise you never, never, to displease you again."
Fénelon did not yield easily, although on the following day he consented to be reconciled to his pupil.
His main dependence, however, in forming the character of the boy, was the sound religious principles which he never grew tired of instilling into his mind by word and example. He would at any moment interrupt literary instruction to explain some point of duty upon which his pupil might desire to converse. He taught him to look up to God, not with servile fear, but to love him; and to love to think and speak of him as the author of all that is beautiful in nature and in man. Fénelon gives us himself an instance of the empire of religion over his soul in a beautiful sketch which he wrote after his pupil's death. "One day," he says, "when he was in a very bad humor, and when he was seeking to conceal some act of disobedience, I asked him to tell me before God what he had done. 'Before God!' he exclaimed with great anger; 'why do you ask me "before God"? But since you do so ask me, I cannot deceive you; I therefore acknowledge my guilt.' He spoke thus, although he was at the moment frantic with rage. But religion had over him so much power that it forced from him the painful avowal."
It is difficult to record without emotion what Fénelon says further on of this noble youth, whom he came to love with paternal tenderness, and whose untimely death filled his heart with sorrow. "He would often tell me in our unrestrained conversations, 'I leave the Duke of Burgundy outside the door when I am with you, and I am nothing but little Louis.'" He closes the sketch by this splendid tribute to the change which had been wrought in his pupil's whole character: "I have never known a person whom it was more easy to tell of his own faults, or who would listen more readily to unpalatable truth." In proof of the excellent literary and scientific training of the prince, we find that the great Bossuet, after examining him for several hours, expressed himself satisfied and surprised at the young man's proficiency; and thus bore testimony to the ability and success of his tutor. Two works besides the Fables deserve to be mentioned as fruits of this course of education. One, Fénelon's Dialogues, in which he presents to his royal pupil the different personages of history, speaking their true sentiments, and making known the secret motives of their actions. The other is the far-famed prose-poem, The Adventures of Telemachus, Son of Ulysses, which has won for its author the glory of having produced the most perfectly-written book in the French language.
Little more remains to be said of the Duke of Burgundy. Fénelon labored long and faithfully to make him fit to ascend the throne of France; he lived to see this work, involving such immense future good or evil, completed, and completed to his entire satisfaction. By an early death the dear young prince, in whom such vast expectations were centred, was lost to the love of his master and of France. Had he lived to reign in place of the weak and dissolute Count d'Artois, afterward Louis XV., the page of history setting forth in letters of fire and blood the scenes of the destruction of the French monarchy, might perhaps have remained unwritten.
Fénelon had not been made bishop, when he became acquainted with Madame de Guyon. He approved of the writings of this gifted woman as sound in the light of Catholic theology. He defended her character as free from the slightest ground of reproach, and avowed the opinion that she was guided by a spirit of goodness and truth. She was looked upon by her adversaries at the court as visionary in her piety, heretical in doctrine, and far from irreproachable in her conduct. Fénelon, now become Archbishop of Cambrai, was forced into a controversy in reference to her affairs, one side of which he conducted alone, while on the other there were ranged against him the great Bossuet, the French court, the king, the court of Rome, and, finally, the supreme pontiff himself.