A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times Volume V Part 26

Pascal, had he been born later, would have remained independent and proud, from the nature of his mind and of his character as well as from the connection he had full early with Port-Royal, where they did not rear courtiers; he died, however, at thirty-nine, in 1661, the very year in which Louis XIV. began to govern. Born at Clermont, in Auvergne, educated at his father's and by his father, though it was not thought desirable to let him study mathematics, he had already discovered by himself the first thirty-two propositions of Euclid, when Cardinal Richelieu, holding on his knee little Jacqueline Pascal, and looking at her brother, said to M. Pascal, the two children's father, who had come to thank him for a favor, "Take care of them; I mean to make something great of them." This was the native and powerful instinct of genius divining genius; Richelieu, however, died three years later, without having done anything for the children who had impressed him beyond giving their father a share in the superintendence of Rouen; he thus put them in the way of the great Corneille, who was affectionately kind to Jacqueline, but took no particular notice of Blaise Pascal. The latter was seventeen; he had already written his _Traite des Coniques_ (Treatise on Conics) and begun to occupy himself with "his arithmetical machine,"

as his sister, Madame Perier calls it. At twenty-three he had ceased to apply his mind to human sciences; "when he afterwards discovered the roulette (cycloid), it was without thinking," says Madame Perier, "and to distract his attention from a severe tooth-ache he had." He was not twenty-four when anxiety for his salvation and for the glory of G.o.d had taken complete possession of his soul. It was to the same end that he composed the _Lettres Provinciales,_ the first of which was written in six days, and the style of which, clear, lively, precise, far removed from the somewhat solemn gravity of Port-Royal, formed French prose as Malherbe and Boileau formed the poetry. This was the impression of his contemporaries, the most hard of them to please in the art of writing.

"That is excellent; that will be relished," said the recluses of Port- Royal, in spite of the misgivings of M. Singlin. More than thirty years after Pascal's ddath, Madame de Sevigne, in 1689, wrote to Madame de Grignan, "Sometimes, to divert ourselves, we read the little Letters (to a provincial). Good heavens, how charming! And how my son reads them!

I always think of my daughter, and how that excess of correctness of reasoning would suit her; but your brother says that you consider that it is always the same thing over again. Ah! My goodness, so much the better! Could any one have a more perfect style, a raillery more refined, more natural, more delicate, worthier offspring of those dialogues of Plato, which are so fine? And when, after the first ten letters, he addresses himself to the reverend Jesuit fathers, what earnestness, what solidity, what force! What eloquence! What love for G.o.d and for the truth! What a way of maintaining it and making it understood! I am sure that you have never read them but in a hurry, pitching on the pleasant places; but it is not so when they are read at leisure." Lord Macaulay once said to M. Guizot, "Amongst modern works I know only two perfect ones, to which there is no exception to be taken, and they are _Pascal's Provincials_ and the _Letters of Madame de Sevigne_."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Blaise Pascal----597]

Boileau was of Lord Macaulay's opinion; at least as regarded Pascal.

"Corbinelli wrote to me the other day," says Madame de Sevigne, on the 15th of January, 1690: "he gave me an account of a conversation and a dinner at M. de Lamoignon's: the persons were the master and mistress of the house, M. de Troyes, M. de Toulon, Father Bourdaloue, a comrade of his, Desprdaux, and Corbinelli. The talk was of ancient and modern works. Despreaux supported the ancient, with the exception of one single modern, which surpa.s.sed, in his opinion, both old and new. Bourdaloue's comrade, who a.s.sumed the well-read air, and who had fastened on to Despreaux and Corbinelli, asked him what in the world this book could be that was so remarkably clever. Despreaux would not give the name.

Corbinelli said to him, 'Sir, I conjure you to tell me, that I may read it all night.' Despreaux answered, laughing, 'Ah! sir, you have read it more than once, I am sure.' The Jesuit joins in, with a disdainful air, and presses Despreaux to name this marvellous writer. 'Do not press me, father,' says Despreaux. The father persists. At last Despreaux takes hold of his arm, and squeezing it very hard, says, 'You will have it, father; well, then, egad! it is Pascal.' 'Pascal,' says the father, all blushes and astonishment; 'Pascal is as beautiful as the false can be.'

'False,' replied Despreaux: 'false! Let me tell you that he is as true as he is inimitable; he has just been translated into three languages.' The father rejoined, 'He is none the more true for that.' Despreaux grew warm, and shouted like a madman: 'Well, father, will you say that one of yours did not have it printed in one of his books that a Christian was not obliged to love G.o.d? Dare you say that that is false?' 'Sir,' said the father, in a fury, 'we must distinguish.' 'Distinguish!' cried Despreaux; 'distinguish, egad! distinguish! Distinguish whether we are obliged to love G.o.d!' And, taking Corbinelli by the arm, he flew off to the other end of the room, coming back again, and rushing about like a lunatic; but he would not go near the father any more, and went off to join the rest of the company. Here endeth the story; the curtain falls."

Literary taste and religious sympathies combined, in the case of Boileau, to exalt Pascal.

The provincials could not satisfy for long the pious ardor of Pascal's soul; he took in hand his great work on the _Verite de la Religion_.

He had taken a vigorous part in the discussions of Port-Royal as to subscription of the formulary: his opinion was decidedly in favor of resistance. It was the moment when MM. Arnauld and Nicole had discovered a restriction, as it was then called, which allowed of subscribing with a safe conscience. "M. Pascal, who loved truth above all things," writes his niece, Marguerite Perier; "who, moreover, was pulled down by a pain in the head, which never left him; who had exerted himself to make them feel as he himself felt; and who had expressed himself very vigorously in spite of his weakness, was so grief-stricken that he had a fit, and lost speech and consciousness. Everybody was alarmed. Exertions were made to bring him round, and then those gentlemen withdrew. When he was quite recovered, Madame Perier asked him what had caused this incident. He answered, 'When I saw all those persons that I looked upon as being those whom G.o.d had made to know the truth, and who ought to be its defenders, wavering and falling. I declare to you that I was so overcome with grief that I was unable to support it, and could not help breaking down.'"

Blaise Pascal was the worthy brother of Jacqueline; in the former, as well as the latter, the soul was too ardent and too strong for its covering of body. Nearly all his relatives died young. "I alone am left," wrote Mdlle. Perier, when she had become, exceptionally, very aged. "I might say, like Simon Maccabeus, the last of all his brethren, All my relatives and all my brethren are dead in the service of G.o.d and in the love of truth. I alone am left; please G.o.d I may never have a thought of backsliding!"

Pascal was unable to finish his work. "G.o.d, who had inspired my brother with this design and with all his thoughts," writes his sister, "did not permit him to bring it to its completion, for reasons to us unknown."

The last years of Pascal's life, invalid as he had been from the age of eighteen, were one long and continual torture, accepted and supported with an austere disdain of suffering. Incapable of any application, he gave his attention solely to his salvation and the care of the poor.

"I have taken it into my head," says he, "to have in the house a sick pauper, to whom the same service shall be rendered as to myself; particular attention to be paid to him, and, in fact, no difference to be made between him and me, in order that I may have the consolation of knowing that there is one pauper as well treated as myself, in the perplexity I suffer from finding myself in the great affluence of every sort in which I do find myself." The spirit of M. de St. Cyran is there, and also the spirit of the gospel, which caused Pascal, when he was dying, to say, "I love poverty, because Jesus Christ loved it. I love wealth, because it gives the means of a.s.sisting the needy." A genius unique in the extent and variety of his faculties, which were applied with the same splendid results to mathematics and physics, to philosophy and polemics, disdaining all preconceived ideas, going unerringly and straightforwardly to the bottom of things with admirable force and profundity, independent and free even in his voluntary submission to the Christian faith, which he accepts with his eyes open, after having weighed it, measured it, and sounded it to its uttermost depths, too steadfast and too simple not to bow his head before mysteries, all the while acknowledging his ignorance. "If there were no darkness," says he, "man would not feel his corruption; if there were no light, man would have no hope of remedy. Thus it is not only quite right, but useful, for us that G.o.d should be concealed in part, and revealed in part, since it is equally dangerous for man to know G.o.d without knowing his own misery, and to know his own misery without knowing G.o.d." The lights of this great intellect had led him to acquiesce in his own fogs. "One can be quite sure that there is a G.o.d, without knowing what He is," says he.

In 1627, four years after Pascal, and, like him, in a family of the long robe, was born, at Dijon, his only rival in that great art of writing prose which established the superiority of the French language. At sixteen, Bossuet preached his first sermon in the drawing-room of Madame de Rambouillet, and the great Conde was pleased to attend his theological examinations. He was already famous at court as a preacher and a polemist when the king gave him the t.i.tle of Bishop of Condom, almost immediately inviting him to become preceptor to the dauphin. A difficult and an irksome task for him who had already written for Turenne an exposition of the Catholic faith, and had delivered the funeral orations over Madame Henriette and the Queen of England. "The king has greatly at heart the dauphin's education," wrote Father Lacoue to Colbert; "he regards it as one of his grand state-strokes in respect of the future."

The dauphin was not devoid of intelligence. "Monseigneur has plenty of wits," said Councillor Le Gout de Saint-Seine in his private journal, "but his wits are under a bushel." The boy was indolent, with little inclination for work, roughly treated by his governor, the Duke of Montausier, who was endowed with more virtue than ability in the superintendence of a prince's education. "O," cried Monseigneur, when official announcement was made to him of the project of marriage which the king was conducting for him with the Princess Christine of Bavaria, "we shall see whether M. Huet (afterwards bishop of Avranches) will want to make me learn ancient geography any more!" Bossuet had better understood what ought to be the aim of a king's education. "Remember, Monseigneur," he constantly repeated to him, "that destined as you are to reign some day over this great kingdom, you are bound to make it happy."

He was in despair at his pupil's inattention. "There is a great deal to endure with a mind so dest.i.tute of application," he wrote to Marshal Bellefonds; "there is no perceptible relief, and we go on, as St. Paul says, hoping against hope." He had written a little treatise on inattention, _De Incogitantia,_--in the vain hope of thus rousing his pupil to work. "I dread nothing in the world so much," Louis XIV would say, "as to have a sluggard (_faineant_) dauphin; I would much prefer to have no son at all!" Bossuet foresaw the innumerable obstacles in the way of his labors. "I perceive, as I think," he wrote to his friends, "in the dauphin the beginnings of great graces, a simplicity, a straightforwardness, a principle of goodness, an attention, amidst all his flightiness, to the mysteries, a something or other which comes with a flash, in the middle of his distractions, to call him back to G.o.d. You would be charmed if I were to tell you the questions he puts to me, and the desire he shows to be a good servant of G.o.d. But the world! the world! the world! pleasures, evil counsels, evil examples! Save us, Lord! save us! Thou didst verily preserve the children from the furnace, but Thou didst send Thine angel; and, as for me, alas! what am I?

Humility, trepidation, absorption into one's own nothingness!"

It was not for Bossuet that the honor was reserved of succeeding in the difficult task of a royal education. Fenelon encountered in the Duke of Burgundy a more undisciplined nature, a more violent character, and more dangerous tendencies than Bossuet had to fight against in the grand-dauphin; but there was a richer mind and a warmer heart; the preceptor, too, was more proper for the work. Bossuet, nevertheless, labored conscientiously to instruct his little prince, studying for him and with him the cla.s.sical authors, preparing grammatical expositions, and, lastly, writing for his edification the _Traite de la Connaissance de Dieu et de soi-mime_ (Treatise on the Knowledge of G.o.d and of Self), the _Discours sur l'Histoire Universelle_ (Discourse on Universal History), and the _Politique tiree de l'Ecriture Sainte_ (Polity derived from Holy Writ). The labor was in vain; the very loftiness of his genius, the extent and profundity of his views, rendered Bossuet unfit to get at the heart and mind of a boy who was timid, idle, and kept in fear by the king as well as by his governor. The dauphin was nineteen when his marriage restored Bossuet to the church and to the world; the king appointed him almoner to the dauphiness, and, before long, Bishop of Meaux.

Neither the a.s.sembly of the clergy and the part he played therein, nor his frequent preachings at court, diverted Bossuet from his duties as bishop; he habitually resided at Meaux, in the midst of his priests. The greater number of his sermons, written at first in fragments, collected from memory in their aggregate, and repeated frequently with divergences in wording and development, were preached in the cathedral of Meaux. The dauphin sometimes went thither to see him. "Pray, sir," he had said to him, in his childhood, "take great care of me whilst I am little; I will of you when I am big." a.s.sured of his righteousness as a priest and his fine tact as a man, the king appealed to Bossuet in the delicate conjunctures of his life. It is related that it was the Bishop of Meaux who dissuaded him from making public his marriage with Madame de Maintenon. She, more anxious for power than splendor, did not bear him any ill-will for it; amidst the various leanings of the court, divided as it was between Jansenism and Quietism, it was to the simple teaching of the Catholic church, represented by Bossuet, that she remained practically attached. Right-minded and strong-minded, but a little cold-hearted, Madame de Maintenon could not suffer herself to be led away by the sublime excesses of the Jansenists or the pious reveries of Madame Guyon; the Jesuits had influence over her, without her being a slave to them; and that influence increased after the death of Bossuet. The guidance of the Bishop of Meaux, in fact, answered the requirements of spirits that were pious and earnest without enthusiasm: less ardent in faith and less absolute in religious practice than M. de St. Cyran and Port-Royal, less exacting in his demands than Father Bourdaloue, susceptible now and then of mystic ideas, as is proved by his letters to Sister Cornuau, he did not let himself be won by the vague ecstasies of absolute (pure) love; he had a mind large enough to say, like Mother Angelica Arnauld, "I am of all saints' order, and all saints are of my order; "but his preferences always inclined towards those saints and learned doctors who had not carried any religious tendency to excess, and who had known how to rest content with the spirit of a rule and a faith that were practical. A wonderful genius, discovering by flashes, and as if by instinct, the most profound truths of human nature, and giving them expression in an incomparable style, forcing, straining the language to make it render his idea, darting at one bound to the sublimest height by use of the simplest terms, which he, so to speak, bore away with him, wresting them from their natural and proper signification. "There, in spite of that great heart of hers, is that princess so admired and so beloved; there, such as Death has made her for us!" Bossuet alone could speak like that.

He was writing incessantly, all the while that he was preaching at Meaux and at Paris, making funeral orations over the queen, Maria Theresa, over the Princess Palatine, Michael Le Tellier, and the Prince of Conde. The Edict of Nantes had just been revoked; controversy with the Protestant ministers, headed by Claude and Jurieu, occupied a great s.p.a.ce in the life of the Bishop of Meaux. He at that time wrote his _Histoire des Variations,_ often unjust and violent, always able in its attacks upon the Reformation; he did not import any zeal into persecution, though all the while admitting unreservedly the doctrines universally propagated amongst Catholics. "I declare," he wrote to M. de Baville, "that I am and have always been of opinion, first, that princes may by penal laws constrain all heretics to conform to the profession and practices of the Catholic church; secondly, that this doctrine ought to be held invariable in the church, which has not only conformed to, but has even demanded, similar ordinances from princes." He at the same time opposed the constraint put upon the new converts to oblige them to go to ma.s.s, without requiring from them any other act of religion.

"When the emperors imposed a like obligation on the Donatists," he wrote to the Bishop of Mirepoix, "it was on the supposition that they were converted, or would be; but the heretics at the present time, who declare themselves by not fulfilling their Easter (communicating), ought to be rather hindered from a.s.sisting at the mysteries than constrained thereto, and the more so in that it appears to be a consequence thereof to constrain them likewise to fulfil their Easter, which is expressly to give occasion for frightful sacrilege. They might be constrained to undergo instruction; but, so far as I can learn, that would hardly advance matters, and I think that we must be reduced to three things; one is, to oblige them to send their children to the schools, or, in default, to find means of taking them out of their hands; another is, to be firm as regards marriages; and the last is, to take great pains to become privately acquainted with those of whom there are good hopes, and to procure for them solid instruction and veritable enlightenment; the rest must be left to time and to the grace of G.o.d. I know of nothing else."

About the same time Fenelon, engaged upon the missions in Poitou, being as much convinced as the Bishop of Meaux of a sovereign's rights over the conscience of the faithful, as well as of the terrible danger of hypocrisy, wrote to Bossuet, telling him that he had demanded the withdrawal of the troops in all the districts he was visiting: "It is no light matter to change the sentiments of a whole people. What difficulty must the apostles have found in changing the face of the universe, overcoming all pa.s.sions, and establishing a doctrine till then unheard of, seeing that we cannot persuade the ignorant by clear and express pa.s.sages which they read every day in favor of the religion of their ancestors, and that the king's own authority stirs up every pa.s.sion to render persuasion more easy for us! The remnants of this sect go on sinking little by little, as regards all exterior observance, into a religious indifference which cannot but cause fear and trembling. If one wanted to make them abjure Christianity and follow the Koran, there would be nothing required but to show them the dragoons; provided that they a.s.semble by night, and withstand all instruction, they consider that they have done enough." Cardinal Noailles was of the same mind as Bossuet and FEnelon. "The king will be pained to decide against your opinion as regards the new converts," says a letter to him from Madame de Maintenon; "meanwhile the most general is to force them to attend at ma.s.s. Your opinion seems to be a condemnation of all that has been hitherto done against these poor creatures. It is not pleasant to hark back so far, and it has always been supposed that, in any case, they must have a religion." In vain were liberty of conscience and its inviolable rights still misunderstood by the n.o.blest spirits, the sincerity and high-mindedness of the great bishops instinctively revolted against the hypocrisy engendered of persecution. The tacit a.s.suagement of the severities against the Reformers, between 1688 and 1700, was the fruit of the representations of Bossuet, Fenelon, and Cardinal Noailles. Madame de Maintenon wrote at that date to one of her relatives, "You are converted; do not meddle in the conversion of others. I confess to you that I do not like the idea of answering before G.o.d and the king for all those conversions."

At the same time with the controversial treatises, the _Elevations sur les Mysteres_ and the _Meditations sur l'Evangile_ were written at Meaux, drawing the bishop away to the serener regions of supreme faith. There might he have chanced to meet those Reformers, as determined as he in the strife, as attached, at bottom, as he, for life and death, to the mysteries and to the lights of a common hope. "When G.o.d shall give us grace to enter Paradise," St. Bernard used to say, "we shall be above all astonished at not finding some of those whom we had thought to meet there, and at finding others whom we did not expect." Bossuet had a moments glimpse of this higher truth; in concert with Leibnitz, a great intellect of more range in knowledge and less steadfastness than he in religious faith, he tried to reconcile the Catholic and Protestant communions in one and the same creed. There were insurmountable difficulties on both sides; the attempt remained unsuccessful.

The Bishop of Meaux had lately triumphed in the matter of Quietism, breaking the ties of old friendship with Fenelon, and more concerned about defending sound doctrine in the church than fearful of hurting his friend, who was sincere and modest in his relations with him, and humbly submissive to the decrees of the court of Rome. The Archbishop of Cambrai was in exile at his own diocese; Bossuet was ill at Meaux, still, however, at work, going deeper every day into that profound study of Holy Writ and of the fathers of the church which shines forth in all his writings. He had stone, and suffered agonies, but would not permit an operation. On his death-bed, surrounded by his nephews and his vicars, he rejected with disdain all eulogies on his episcopal life. "Speak to me of necessary truths," said he, preserving to the last the simplicity of a great and strong mind, accustomed to turn from appearances and secondary doctrines to embrace the mighty realities of time and of eternity. He died at Paris on the 12th of April, 1704, just when the troubles of the church were springing up again. Great was the consternation amongst the bishops of France, wont as they were to shape themselves by his counsels. "Men were astounded at this mortal's mortality." Bossuet was seventy-three.

A month later, on the 13th of May, Father Bourdaloue in his turn died.

A model of close logic and moral austerity, with a stiff and manly eloquence, so impressed with the miserable insufficiency of human efforts, that he said as he was dying, "My G.o.d, I have wasted life; it is just that Thou recall it." There remained only Fenelon in the first rank, which Ma.s.sillon did not as yet dispute with him. Malebranche was living retired in his cell at the Oratory, seldom speaking, writing his _Recherches sur la Verite_ (Researches into Truth), and his _Entretiens sur la Metaphysique_ (Discourses on Metaphysics), bolder in thought than he was aware of or wished, sincere and natural in his meditations as well as in his style. In spite of Flechier's eloquence in certain funeral orations, posterity has decided against the modesty of the Archbishop of Cambrai, who said at the death of the Bishop of Nimes, in 1710, "We have lost our master." In his retirement or his exile, after Bossuet's death, it was around Fenelon that was concentrated all the l.u.s.tre of the French episcopate, long since restored to the respect and admiration it deserved.

Fenelon was born in Perigord, at the castle of Fenelon, on the 6th of August, 1651. Like Cardinal Retz he belonged to an ancient and n.o.ble house, and was destined from his youth for the church. Brought up at the seminary of St. Sulpice, lately founded by M. Olier, he for a short time conceived the idea of devoting himself to foreign missions; his weak health and his family's opposition turned him ere long from his purpose, but the preaching of the gospel amongst the heathen continued to have for him an attractionn which is perfectly depicted in one of the rare sermons of his which have been preserved. He had held himself modestly aloof, occupied with confirming new Catholics in their conversion or with preaching to the Protestants of Poitou; he had written nothing but his _Traite de l'Education des Filles,_ intended for the family of the Duke of Beauvilliers, and a book on the _ministere du pasteur_. He was in bad odor with Harlay, Archbishop of Paris, who had said to him curtly one day, "You want to escape notice, M. Abbe, and you will;" nevertheless, when Louis XIV. chose the Duke of Beauvilliers as governor to his grandson, the Duke of Burgundy, the duke at once called Fenelon, then thirty-eight years of age, to the important post of preceptor.

Whereas the grand-dauphin, endowed with ordinary intelligence, was indolent and feeble, his son was, in the same proportion, violent, fiery, indomitable. "The Duke of Burgundy," says St. Simon, "was a born demon (_naquit terrible_), and in his early youth caused fear and trembling.

Harsh, pa.s.sionate, even to the last degree of rage against inanimate things, madly impetuous, unable to bear the least opposition, even from the hours and the elements, without flying into furies enough to make you fear that everything inside him would burst; obstinate to excess, pa.s.sionately fond of all pleasures, of good living, of the chase madly, of music with a sort of transport, and of play too, in which he could not bear to lose; often ferocious, naturally inclined to cruelty, savage in raillery, taking off absurdities with a patness which was killing; from the height of the clouds he regarded men as but atoms to whom he bore no resemblance, whoever they might be. Barely did the princes his brothers appear to him intermediary between himself and the human race, although there had always been an affectation of bringing them all three up in perfect equality; wits, penetration, flashed from every part of him, even in his transports; his repartees were astounding, his replies always went to the point and deep down, even in his mad fits; he made child's play of the most abstract sciences; the extent and vivacity of his wits were prodigious, and hindered him from applying himself to one thing at a time, so far as to render him incapable of it."

As a sincere Christian and a priest, Fenelon saw from the first that religion alone could triumph over this terrible nature; the Duke of Beauvilliers, as sincere and as christianly as he, without much wits, modestly allowed himself to be led; all the motives that act most powerfully on a generous spirit, honor, confidence, fear and love of G.o.d, were employed one after the other to bring the prince into self-subjection. He was but eight years old, and Fenelon had been only a few months with him, when the child put into his hands one day the following engagement:--

"I promise M. l'Abbe de Fenelon, on the honor of a prince, to do at once whatever he bids me, and to obey him the instant he orders me anything, and, if I fail to, I will submit to any kind of punishment and disgrace."

"Done at Versailles the 29th of November, 1689.

"Signed: Louis."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fenelon and the Duke of Burgundy----610]

The child, however, would forget himself, and relapse into his mad fits.

When his preceptor was chiding him one day for a grave fault, he went so far as to say, "No, no, sir; I know who I am and what you are." Fenelon made no reply; coldly and gravely he allowed the day to close and the night to pa.s.s without showing his pupil any sign of either resentment or affection. Next day the Duke of Burgundy was scarcely awake when his preceptor entered the room. "I do not know, sir," said he, "whether you remember what you said to me yesterday, that you know what you are and what I am. It is my duty to teach you that you do not know either one or the other. You fancy yourself, sir, to be more than I; some lackeys, no doubt, have told you so, but I am not afraid to tell you, since you force me to it, that I am more than you. You have sense enough to understand that there is no question here of birth. You would consider anybody out of his wits who pretended to make a merit of it that the rain of heaven had fertilized his crops without moistening his neighbors. You would be no wiser if you were disposed to be vain of your birth, which adds nothing to your personal merit. You cannot doubt that I am above you in lights and knowledge. You know nothing but what I have taught you; and what I have taught you is nothing compared with what I might still teach you. As for authority, you have none over me; and I, on the contrary, have it fully and entirely over you; the king and Monseigneur have told you so often enough. You fancy, perhaps, that I think myself very fortunate to hold the office I discharge towards you; disabuse yourself once more, sir; I only took it in order to obey the king and give pleasure to Monseigneur, and not at all for the painful privilege of being your preceptor; and, that you may have no doubt about it, I am going to take you to his Majesty, and beg him to get you another one, whose pains I hope may be more successful than mine." The Duke of Burgundy's pa.s.sion was past, and he burst into sobs. "Ah! sir," he cried, "I am in despair at what took place yesterday; if you speak to the king, you will lose me his affection; if you leave me, what will be thought of me? I promise you. I promise you . . . that you shall be satisfied with me; but promise me . . ."

Fenelon promised nothing; he remained, and the foundation of his authority was laid forever in the soul of his pupil. The young prince did not forget what he was, but he had felt the superiority of his master. "I leave the Duke of Burgundy behind the door," he was accustomed to say, "and with you I am only little Louis."

G.o.d, at the same time with Fenelon, had taken possession of the Duke of Burgundy's soul. "After his first communion, we saw disappearing little by little all the faults which, in his infancy, caused us great misgivings as to the future," writes Madame de Maintenon. "His piety has caused such a metamorphosis that, from the pa.s.sionate thing he was, he has become self-restrained, gentle, complaisant; one would say that that was his character, and that virtue was natural to him." "All his mad fits and spites yielded at the bare name of G.o.d," Fenelon used to say; "one day when he was in a very bad temper, and wanted to hide in his pa.s.sion what he had done in his disobedience, I pressed him to tell me the truth before G.o.d; then he put himself into a great rage and bawled, 'Why ask me before G.o.d? Very well, then, as you ask me in that way, I cannot deny that I committed that fault.' He was as it were beside himself with excess of rage, and yet religion had such dominion over him that it wrung from him so painful an avowal." "From this abyss," writes the Duke of St. Simon, "came forth a prince affable, gentle, humane, self-restrained, patient, modest, humble, and austere towards himself, wholly devoted to his obligations and feeling them to be immense; he thought of nothing but combining the duties of a son and a subject with those to which he saw himself destined."

"From this abyss " came forth also a prince singularly well informed, fond of study, with a refined taste in literature, with a pa.s.sion for science; for his instruction Fenelon made use of the great works composed for his father's education by Bossuet, adding thereto writings more suitable for his age; for him he composed the _Fables_ and the _Dialogues des Morts,_ and a _Histoire de Charlemagne_ which has perished. In his stories, even those that were imaginary, he paid attention before everything to truth. "Better leave a history in all its dryness than enliven it at the expense of truth," he would say. The suppleness and richness of his mind sufficed to save him from wearisomeness; the liveliness of his literary impressions communicated itself to his pupil.

"I have seen," says Fenelon in his letter to the French Academy, "I have seen a young prince, but eight years old, overcome with grief at sight of the peril of little Joash; I have seen him lose patience with the chief priest for concealing from Joash his name and his birth; I have seen him weeping bitterly as he listened to these verses:--

'O! miseram Euridicen anima fugiente vocabat; Euridicen toto referebant flumine ripx.'"

The soul and mind of Fenelon were sympathetic; Bossuet, in writing for the grand-dauphin, was responsive to the requirements of his own mind, never to those of the boy's with whose education he had been intrusted.

Fenelon also wrote _Telemaque_. "It is a fabulous narrative," he himself says, "in the form of an heroic poem, like Homer's or Virgil's, wherein I have set forth the princ.i.p.al actions that are meet for a prince whose birth points him out as destined to reign. I did it at a time when I was charmed with the marks of confidence and kindness showered upon me by the king; I must have been not only the most ungrateful but the most insensate of men to have intended to put into it satirical and insolent portraits; I shrink from the bare idea of such a design. It is true that I have inserted in these adventures all the verities necessary for government and all the defects that one can show in the exercise of sovereign power; but I have not stamped any of them with a peculiarity which would point to any portrait or caricature. The more the work is read, the more it will be seen that I wished to express everything without depicting anybody consecutively; it is, in fact, a narrative done in haste, in detached pieces and at different intervals; all I thought of was to amuse the Duke of Burgundy, and, whilst amusing, to instruct him, without ever meaning to give the work to the public."

_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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d and yourself only," answered Fenelon in a letter full of wise and tender counsels; it is no question of me. Thank G.o.d, I have a heart at ease; my heaviest cross is that I do not see you, but I constantly present you before G.o.d in closer presence than that of the senses. I would give a thousand lives like a drop of water to see you such as G.o.d 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 pa.s.sions, "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 antic.i.p.ate 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.serted 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 n.o.bleness beneath his pen, and he would have made flowers grow in the midst of thorns. A n.o.ble 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 n.o.body, 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 G.o.d, 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 grat.i.tude, 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 G.o.d, 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 n.o.blest 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 a.s.sailants 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sion, which she admitted n.o.body 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 G.o.d, 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 Sevign~ 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 (pa.s.se pipds) 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; n.o.body 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 b.a.l.l.s, 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."