him an adversary, but he still spoke of him with profound veneration.  “Fear not,” he writes to Madame de Maintenon, “that I should gainsay M. de Meaux; I shall never speak of him but as of my master, and of his propositions but as the rule of faith.”  Fenelon was at Cambrai, being regular in the residence which removed him for nine months in the year from the court and the children of France, when there appeared his Explication des Maximes des Saints sur la Vie Interieure (Exposition of the Maxims of the Saints touching the Inner Life), almost at the same moment as Bossuet’s Instruction sur les Etats d’ Oraison (Lessons on States of Orison).  Fenelon’s book appeared as dangerous as those of Madame Guyon; he himself submitted it to the pope, and was getting ready to repair to Rome to defend his cause, when the king wrote to him, “I do not think proper to allow you to go to Rome; you must, on the contrary, repair to your diocese, whence I forbid you to go away; you can send to Rome your pleas in justification of your book.”

Fenelon departed to an exile which was to last as long as his life; on his departure, he wrote to Madame de Maintenon, “I shall depart hence, madame, to-morrow, Friday, in obedience to the king.  My greatest sorrow is to have wearied him and to displease him.  I shall not cease, all the days of my life, to pray God to pour His graces upon him.  I consent to be crushed more and more.  The only thing I ask of his Majesty is, that the diocese of Cambrai, which is guiltless, may not suffer for the errors imputed to me.  I ask protection only for the sake of the church, and even that protection I limit to not being disturbed in those few good works which my present position permits me to do, in order to fulfil a pastor’s duties.  It remains for me, madame, only to ask your pardon for all the trouble I have caused you.  I shall all my life be as deeply sensible of your former kindnesses as if I had not forfeited them, and my respectful attachment to yourself, madame, will never diminish.”

Fenelon made no mistake in addressing to Madame de Maintenon his farewell and his regrets; she had acted against him with the uneasiness of a person led away for a moment by an irresistible attraction, and returning, quite affrighted, to rule and the beaten paths.  The mere love theory had no power to fascinate her for long.  The Archbishop of Cambrai did not drop out of that pleasant dignity.  The pious councillors of the king were working against him at Rome, bringing all the influence of France to weigh upon Innocent XII.  Fenelon had taken no part in the declarations of the Gallican church, in 1682, which had been drawn up by Bossuet; the court of Rome was inclined towards him; the strife became bitter and personal; pamphlets succeeded pamphlets, letters.  Bossuet published a Relation du Quietisme (An Account of Quietism), and remarks upon the reply of M. de Cambrai.  “I write this for the