had confirmed; and they repaid that protection by the most hearty zeal for your service.  Yet these did you force, by the most inhuman severities, either to quit the religion in which they were bred, and which their consciences still retained, or to leave their native land, and endure all the woes of a perpetual exile.  If the rules of policy could not hinder you from thus depopulating your kingdom, and transferring to foreign countries its manufactures and commerce, I am surprised that your heart itself did not stop you.  It makes one shudder to think that such orders should be sent from the most polished court in Europe, as the most savage Tartars could hardly have executed without remorse and compassion.

Louis.—­It was not my heart, but my religion, that dictated these severities.  My confessor told me they alone would atone for all my sins.

Peter.—­Had I believed in my patriarch as you believed in your priest, I should not have been the great monarch that I was.  But I mean not to detract from the merit of a prince whose memory is dear to his subjects.  They are proud of having obeyed you, which is certainly the highest praise to a king.  My people also date their glory from the era of my reign.  But there is this capital distinction between us.  The pomp and pageantry of state were necessary to your greatness; I was great in myself, great in the energy and powers of my mind, great in the superiority and sovereignty of my soul over all other men.

DIALOGUE III.

PLATO—­FENELON.

Plato.—­Welcome to Elysium, O thou, the most pure, the most gentle, the most refined disciple of philosophy that the world in modern times has produced!  Sage Fenelon, welcome!—­I need not name myself to you.  Our souls by sympathy must know one another.

Fenelon.—­I know you to be Plato, the most amiable of all the disciples of Socrates, and the philosopher of all antiquity whom I most desired to resemble.

Plato.—­Homer and Orpheus are impatient to see you in that region of these happy fields which their shades inhabit.  They both acknowledge you to be a great poet, though you have written no verses.  And they are now busy in composing for you unfading wreaths of all the finest and sweetest Elysian flowers.  But I will lead you from them to the sacred grove of philosophy, on the highest hill of Elysium, where the air is most pure and most serene.  I will conduct you to the fountain of wisdom, in which you will see, as in your own writings, the fair image of virtue perpetually reflected.  It will raise in you more love than was felt by Narcissus, when he contemplated the beauty of his own face in the unruffled spring.  But you shall not pine, as he did, for a shadow.  The goddess herself will affectionately meet your embraces and mingle with your soul.

Fenelon.—­I find you retain the allegorical and poetical style, of which you were so fond in many of your writings.  Mine also run sometimes into poetry, particularly in my “Telemachus,” which I meant to make a kind of epic composition.  But I dare not rank myself among the great poets, nor pretend to any equality in oratory with you, the most eloquent of philosophers, on whose lips the Attic bees distilled all their honey.