Those faithful friends were dropping one after another.  The death of the Duke of Burgundy and of the Duke of Chevreuse in 1712, and that of the Duke of Beauvilliers in 1714, were a fatal blow to the affections as well as to the ambitious hopes of Fenelon.  Of delicate health, worn out by the manifold duties of the episcopate, inwardly wearied by long and vain expectation, he succumbed on the 7th of January, 1715, at the moment when the attraction shown by the Duke of Orleans towards him and “the king’s declining state” were once more renewing his chances of power.  “He was already consulted in private and courted again in public,” says St. Simon, “because the inclination of the rising sun had already shown through.”  He died, however, without letting any sign of yearning for life appear, “regardless of all that he was leaving, and occupied solely with that which he was going to meet, with a tranquillity, a peace, which excluded nothing but disquietude, and which included penitence, despoilment, and a unique care for the spiritual affairs of his diocese.”  The Christian soul was detaching itself from the world to go before God with sweet and simple confidence.  “O, how great is God! how all in all!  How as nothing are we when we are so near Him, and when the veil which conceals Him from us is about to lift!” [Euvres de Fenelon, Lettres Spirituelles, xxv. 128.]

[Illustration:  Bossuet——­591]

So many fires smouldering in the hearts, so many different struggles going on in the souls, that sought to manifest their personal and independent life have often caused forgetfulness of the great mass of the faithful who were neither Jansenists nor Quietists.  Bossuet was the real head and the pride of the great Catholic church of France in the seventeenth century; what he approved of was approved of by the immense majority of the French clergy, what he condemned was condemned by them.  Moderate and prudent in conduct as well as in his opinions, pious without being fervent, holding discreetly aloof from all excesses, he was a Gallican without fear and without estrangement as regarded the papal power, to which he steadfastly paid homage.  It was with pain, and not without having sought to escape therefrom, that he found himself obliged, at the assembly of the clergy in 1682, to draw up the solemn declarations of the Gallican church.  The meeting of the clergy had been called forth by the eternal discussions of the civil power with the court of Rome on the question of the rights of regale, that is to say, the rights of the sovereign to receive the revenues of vacant bishoprics, and to appoint to benefices belonging to them.  The French bishops were of independent spirit; the Archbishop of Paris, Francis de Harlay, was on bad terms with Pope Innocent XI.; Bossuet managed to moderate the discussions, and kept within suitable bounds the declaration which he could not avoid.  He had always taught and maintained what was proclaimed by the assembly of the