Part 34

The circumstance that confirmed the king's distaste to the virtuous archbishop, was the publication of Telemachus. Fénélon appears to have employed his leisure, while preceptor to the princes, on composing a work which hereafter would serve as a guide and instructor to the duke of Burgundy. The unfortunate affair of quietism led him from such studies; but Telemachus was already finished: he gave it to a valet to copy, who sold it to a bookseller in Paris. The spies, who watched every movement of the archbishop, gave notice of the existence of the book; and when the printing had advanced to the 208th page, the whole was seized, and every exertion to annihilate the work was made. Fortunately, motives of gain sharpened men's wits for its preservation; a manuscript copy was preserved; it was sold to Adrian Moetjens, a bookseller at the Hague, who published it in June, 1699,--incorrectly, indeed, as it remained during the author's life; but still it was printed; editions were multiplied; it was translated into every European language, and universally read and admired. In the work itself there was much to annoy Louis XIV., who, as he grew old and bigoted, lost all the generosity which he had heretofore possessed, and, spoilt by the sort of adoration which all writers paid, grasped at flattery more eagerly than in his earlier and more laudable career. The lessons of wisdom sounded like censure in his ear. The courtiers increased his irritability, by making particular applications of the personages in the tale[115]; but without this frivolous and unfounded interpretation, there was enough to awaken his sense of being covertly attacked. The very virtues fostered in the duke of Burgundy, were, to his haughty mind, proof of the archbishop's guilt. He saw, in the mingled loftiness and humility of his heir, in his high sense of duty and love of peace, a living criticism of his reign. From that moment Fénélon became odious; to visit, to love, to praise him, ensured disgrace at court. Telemachus was never mentioned, though Louis might have been aware that silence on such a subject, was to acknowledge the justice of the lesson which he believed that it conveyed.

Meanwhile Fénélon looked upon his residence in his diocese as his natural and proper position. To cultivate internal calm, and to spread the blessings of peace around, were the labour of his day. On his first arrival, he had been received with transport. "Here I am," he cried, "among my children, and therefore in my true place." And to the duke de Beauvilliers he wrote: "I work softly and gently, and endeavour, as much as I can, to put myself in the way of being useful to my flock. They begin to love me. I endeavour to make them find me easy of access, uniform in my conduct, and without haughtiness, rigour, selfishness, or deceit: they already appear to have some confidence in me; and let me assure you, that even these good Fleminders, with their homely appearance, have more finesse than I wish to put into my conduct towards them. They inquire of one another, whether I am really banished; and they question my servants about it: if they put the question to me, I shall make no mystery. It is certainly an affliction to be separated from you, and the good duchess and my other friends; but I am happy to be at a distance from the great scene, and sing the canticle of deliverance." In accordance with this view, from this hour he devoted himself to his diocesans. Rich and poor alike had easy access to him. Disappointment and meditation had softened every priestly asperity. His manner was the mirror of his benevolent expansive heart. A curate wishing to put an end to the festive assemblies of the peasants on Sundays and other festivals, Fénélon observed, "We will not dance ourselves, M. le Curé, but we will suffer these poor people to enjoy themselves." That he might keep watch over his inferior clergy, he visited every portion of his diocese; twice a week, during lent, he preached in some parish church of his diocese. On solemn festivals he preached in his metropolitan church; visited the sick, assisted the needy, and reformed abuses. He was particularly solicitous in forming worthy ecclesiastics for the churches under his care. He removed his seminary from Valenciennes to Cambray, that it might be more immediately under his eye. His sermons were plain, instructive, simple; yet burning with faith and charity. He lived like a brother with his under-clergy, receiving advice; and never used authority except when absolutely necessary.

He slept little, and was abstemious at table. His walks were his only pleasure. During these, he conversed with his friends, or entered into conversation with the peasants he might chance to meet; sitting on the grass, or entering their cottages, as he listened to their complaints. Long after his death, old men showed, with tears in their eyes, the wooden chair which, in their boyhood, they had seen occupied by their beloved and revered archbishop. His admirable benevolence, his unbounded sympathy and calm sense of justice, won the hearts of all. One man of high birth, who had been introduced into his palace, ostensibly as high vicar, but really as a spy, was so touched by the unblemished virtue he witnessed, that he threw himself at Fénélon's feet, confessed his crime, and then, unable to meet his eye, banished himself from his presence, and lived ever after in exile and obscurity.

The duke of Burgundy had been commanded to hold no intercourse with his beloved and unforgotten preceptor; and the spies set over both were on the alert to discover any letters. When the duke of Anjou was raised to the throne of Spain, his elder brother conducted him to the frontier. Soon after his return, he came to a resolution to break through the king's restriction, and wrote to his revered teacher through his governor, the duke de Beauvilliers. His letter is unaffected and sincere; it laments the silence to which he had been condemned, and assures the archbishop that his friendship had been augmented, not chilled, by his misfortunes. It speaks of his own struggles to keep in the paths of virtue; and relates that he loved study better than ever, and was desirous of sending several of his writings to be corrected by his preceptor, as he had formerly corrected his themes. Fénélon's answer marks his delight in finding that his pupil adhered to the lessons he had taught him. He confirms him in his piety: "In the name of God," he writes, "let prayer nourish your soul, as food nourishes your body. Do not make long prayers; let them spring more from the heart than the understanding; little from reasoning--much from simple affection; few ideas in consecutive order, but many acts of faith and love. Be humble and little. I only speak to you of God and yourself. There need be no question of me: my heart is in peace. My greatest misfortune has been, not to see you; but I carry you unceasingly with me before God, into a presence more intimate than that of the senses. I would give a thousand lives like a drop of water, to see you such as God would wish you to be!"

In all Fénélon's letters there is not a querulous word concerning his exile, although we perceive traces in the view he takes of the position of others, and in the advice he gives, of the pleasure he must have derived from the cultivated society then collected in Paris; but he could cheerfully bear absence from the busy scene. His simple and affectionate heart found food for happiness among his flock. To instruct his seminarists with the patience and gentleness that adorned his character; to watch over the affairs of his diocese; to teach by sermons, which flowed from the abundance of his heart; and in writing letters of instruction to various of the laity, who placed themselves under his direction,--were his occupations; and his time employed by these duties and by writing, was fully and worthily employed. He regretted his absence from some of his friends, with whom he corresponded; but he never complained. The peace of heaven was in his heart; and he breathed an air purged of all human disquietude. It was his religion not to make himself unhappy about even his own errors. He taught that we ought to deliver our souls into the hands of God, and submit, as to his pleasure, to the shame and annoyance brought on us by our imperfections; not only to feel as nothing before him, but not even to wish to feel any thing. "I adore you, infant Jesus," he wrote, "naked, and weeping, and stretched upon the cross. I love your infancy and poverty: O! that I were as childlike and poor as you. O Eternal wisdom, reduced to infancy, take away my vain and presumptuous wisdom; make me a child like yourself. Be silent, ye wise men of the earth! I desire to be nothing, to know nothing; to believe all, to suffer all, and to love all. The Word, made flesh, lisps, weeps, and gives forth infantine cries;--and shall I take pride in wisdom; shall I take pleasure in the efforts of my understanding, and fear that the world should not entertain a sufficiently high idea of my ability. No, no; all my delight will be to grow little; to crush myself; to become obscure; to be silent; to join to the shame of Jesus crucified, the impotence and lisping of the infant Jesus."

When we reflect that this was written by a man who sedulously adorned his mind by the study of the ancients, and who added to his own language, books written with elegance and learning, and which display a comprehensive understanding and delicate taste, we feel the extent of that humility which could disregard all these human acquirements compared with the omniscience of God; and that as Socrates acknowledged that he knew nothing, and was therefore pronounced to be the wisest of men, so did the sense which Fénélon entertained of the nothingness of human wisdom, stamp him as far advanced in that higher knowledge which can look down on all human efforts as the working of emmets on an ant-hill.

Fénélon believed that man had no power to seek heavenly good without the grace of the Saviour. When man does right, he alleged that he only assented to the impulse of God, who disposed him through his grace so to assent. When he did ill, he only resisted the action of God, which produces no good in him without the co-operation of his assent, thus preserving his free will. He considered true charity, or love of God, to which he gave this name, as an intimate sense of and delight in God's perfections, without any aspiration to salvation. He supposed that there was a love of the beautiful, the perfect, and the orderly, beyond all taste and sentiment, which may influence us when we lose the pleasurable sense of the action of the grace of God, and which is a sufficing reason to move the will in all the pains and privations which abound on the holy paths of virtue. He would have carried this notion further, but was obliged to mould his particular notion by the faith of the church, which enforces what it calls a "chaste hope of salvation," in contradiction to the quietists, who banish every idea of beatification, and profess to be willing to encounter perdition, if such were the Almighty's will. He was more opposed to jansenism, which makes salvation all in all, while it confines it to the elect of God. Jansenism, indeed, he considered as peculiarly injurious, and destructive to the true love of God. But as bigotry made no part of his nature, he tolerated the jansenists, though he would gladly have converted them; he invited their chief, father Quesnell, to his palace, promising not to introduce any controversy unless he wished; but testifying his desire, at the same time, to prove that he mistook the meaning of St. Augustin, on whom Jansenius founded his doctrine. Of Pascal's Provincial Letters, he wrote to the duke de Beauvilliers, that he recommended that his royal pupil should read them, as the great reputation they enjoyed, would cause him certainly to desire to see them; and sent a memorial at the same time, which he considered as a refutation of the mistakes into which he believed Pascal had fallen. He was equally tolerant of protestants; and when M. Brunier, minister of the protestants dispersed on the frontiers of France, came to Mons to see him, Fénélon received him with his accustomed cordial hospitality, and begged him often to repeat his visit.

During the war for the Spanish succession, Fénélon's admirable character shone forth in all its glory. Living on a frontier exposed to the incursions of the enemy, he was active in alleviating the sufferings of the people. The nobles and officers of the French armies, who passed through Cambray, pointedly avoided him, out of compliment to their mistaken sovereign; while a contrary sentiment, a wish to annoy Louis XIV., joined to sincere admiration of his genius and virtue, caused the enemy to act very differently. The English, Germans, and Dutch, were eager to display their veneration of the archbishop. They afforded him every facility for visiting the various parts of his diocese. They sent detachments to guard his fields, and to escort his harvest into the city. He was often obliged to have recourse to artifice to avoid the honours which the generals of the armies of the enemy were desirous of paying. He declined the visits of the duke of Marlborough and prince Eugene, who were desirous of rendering homage to his excellence. He refused the military escorts offered to ensure his safety; and, with the attendance only of a few ecclesiastics, he traversed countries devastated by war, carrying peace and succour in his train, so that his pastoral visits might be termed the truce of God. The French biographers delight in recording one trait of his benevolence. During one of his journeys, he met a peasant in the utmost affliction. The archbishop asked the cause of his grief; and was told that the enemy had driven away his cow, on which his family depended for support, and that his life was in danger if he went to seek it. Fénélon, on this, set off in pursuit, found the cow, and drove it home himself to the peasant's cottage.

Deserted and neglected by his countrymen, he took pleasure in receiving foreigners, and learning from them the manners, customs, and laws of their various countries. His philanthropy was of the most extensive kind: "I love my family," he said, "better than myself; I love my country better than my family; but I love the human race more than my country." A German prince visited him, desirous of receiving lessons of wisdom. Him he taught toleration; satisfaction in a constitutional government; and a desire for the progress of knowledge among his subjects. The duke of Orleans, afterwards the libertine regent of France, consulted him with regard to many sceptical doubts. He asked him how the existence of God was proved; what worship the Deity approved, and whether he was offended by a false one. Fénélon replied by a treatise on the existence of God, which is characterised, as his theology always is, by a fervent spirit of charity.

In 1702 the duke of Burgundy headed the army in Flanders. He with difficulty obtained leave to see the archbishop, when he visited Cambray; his interview, when permitted, was restricted to being a public one. Fénélon, fearing to raise a painful struggle in his beloved pupil's mind, had left Cambray, when the letter came to apprise him that they were allowed to meet. They met at a public dinner at the town-house of Cambray. It passed in cold ceremony and painful reserve: it was only at the close, when Fénélon presented the napkin to the prince, that the latter marked his internal feeling, when, on returning it, he said aloud, "I am aware, my lord archbishop, of what I owe you, and you know what I am." They corresponded after this, and Fénélon's letters are remarkable for the care he takes to check all bigotry, intolerance, and petty religious observances in his pupil; telling him that a prince cannot serve God as a hermit or an obscure individual. He informed him that the public regarded him as virtuous, but as stern, timid, and scrupulous. He endeavoured to raise him above these poorer thoughts, to the lofty height he himself had reached. He taught him to regard his rank in its proper light, as a motive for goodness and benevolence, and to desire to be the father, not the master of his people. His opinions with regard to the duke are given in great detail in a letter of advice addressed to the duke Beauvilliers, in which we see that the priest has no sinister influence over the man; and that while Fénélon practised privation in his own person, he could recommend an opposite course to an individual differently placed. This intercourse was again renewed in 1708, when the duke again made a campaign in Flanders. The letters of his ancient preceptor on this occasion, are frank and manly: he tells him the public opinion; he advises him how best to gain general confidence; and to sacrifice all his narrow and peculiar opinions to an elevated, unprejudiced view of humanity. The reply of the prince, thanking him for his counsels, and assuring him of his resolution to act upon them, is highly worthy of a man of honour and virtue.

[Sidenote: 1709. Ætat. 58.]

The effect of the war was to spread famine and misery throughout France: 1709 was a year marked by suffering and want; the army in Flanders was destitute of dépôts for food. Fénélon set the example of furnishing the soldiery with bread. Some narrow-minded men around him remonstrated, saying that the king had treated him so ill, that he did not deserve that he should come forward to assist his subjects. Fénélon, animated by that simple sense of justice that characterised him, replied, "The king owes me nothing; and in the evils that overwhelm the people, I ought, as a Frenchman and a bishop, to give back to the state what I have received from it." His palace was open to the officers who needed assistance and shelter; and after the battle of Malplaquet, that, as well as his neighbouring seminary, was filled with the wounded. His generosity went so far as to hire houses to receive others, when his own apartments were full. His prudence and order afforded him the means of meeting these calls on his liberality, which he did not confine to the upper classes. Whole villages were emptied by the approach of the armies, and the inhabitants took refuge in the fortified towns: to watch over these sufferers--to console them, and prevent the disorders usually incident to such an addition to the population, was another task, which he cheerfully fulfilled, going about among them, and soothing them with his gentleness and kindness.

[Sidenote: 1711. Ætat. 60.]

When the dauphin, father of the duke of Burgundy, died,--men, supple in their servility, began to consider that, on the event of his pupil's accession to the throne, Fénélon would become powerful; and the nobles and officers began to pay him court, when passing through Cambray: Fénélon received them with the same simplicity with which he regarded their absence. He was far above all human grandeur; he only made use of the respect rendered him, for the benefit of those who paid it. It was a miserable reverse to his hopes for France when his royal pupil died. [Sidenote: 1712. Ætat. 61.] Fénélon received the intelligence of his death with that mingled grief and resignation that belonged to his character. He declared, that though all his ties were broken, and that nothing hereafter would attach him to earth, yet that he would not move a finger to recall the prince to life, against the will of God. His last years were marked by the deaths of several of his dearest friends. The abbé de Langeron, banished from court for his sake, and who resided with him at Cambray, had died 1710, and with his death began the series of losses afterwards destined to afflict Fénélon deeply. In 1713 the dukes de Bouvilliers and de Chevreuse, both died. He felt his losses deeply; knowing that they came from the hand of God, he resigned himself, but grew entirely detached from the affections and interests of this world.

Louis at last learnt to appreciate the merits of the most virtuous and wisest man in his kingdom. His misfortunes, and the deaths, one after the other, of all his posterity, softened his heart; added to this, the death of Fénélon's pupil took away the sting of envy; he no longer feared that he should be surpassed in glory and good by his successor; and he could love the teacher of those virtues, which existed no longer in the person of his grandson to eclipse his own. That such unworthy motives might actuate him, is proved by his act of burning all the papers and letters of Fénélon which were found among the effects of the duke of Burgundy after his death. Fénélon requested the duke de Beauvilliers to claim them, who made the request to madame de Maintenon. She replied: "I was desirous of sending you back all the papers belonging to you and M. de Cambray; but the king chose to burn them himself. I confess that I am truly sorry; nothing so beautiful or so good was ever written. If the prince whom we lament had some faults, it was not because the counsels given him were feeble, or because he was too much flattered. We may say, that those who act uprightly are never put to confusion." But though the king indulged a mean spirit in destroying these invaluable papers, the reading them led him to esteem the writer. Accordingly, he often sent to consult him, and was about to recall him to court, when the fatal event arrived, which robbed the world of him. We are told also that the pope, Clement XI., had destined for him a cardinal's hat.

At the beginning of 1715 Fénélon fell ill of an inflammation of the chest, which caused a continual fever. It lasted for six days and a half, with extreme pain. During this period he gave every mark of patience, gentleness, and firmness. There were no unmanly fears, nor unchristian negligence. On the fifth day of his illness he dictated a letter to the confessor of the king, declaratory of his inviolable attachment to his sovereign, and his entire acquiescence in the condemnation of his book. He made two requests, both relating to his diocese: the one, that a worthy successor, opposed to jansenism, should be given him; the other regarded the establishment of his seminary. From this time he appeared insensible to what he quitted, and occupied only by the thought of what he was going to meet. He passed his last hours surrounded by his friends, and particularly by his beloved nephew, the marquis de Fénélon[116]; and breathed his last without a pang.

Louis XIV. outlived him but a few months. The duke of Orleans became regent. France flourished in peace under his regency; while its aristocracy was corrupted by a state of libertinism and profligacy, unequalled except in the pages of Suetonius. Had Fénélon lived, would he not have influenced the regent, whose perverted mind was yet adorned by talents, and regulated by a sense of political justice?--Would he not have fostered the child of his pupil, and engrafted virtue in the soul of Louis XV.? This is but conjecture; futile, except as it may teach us to make use of the example and precepts of the good and wise, while they are spared to us. Soon all but their memory is lost in the obscurity and nothingness of the tomb.

In person, Fénélon was tall and well made; a paleness of countenance testified his studious and abstemious habits; while his expressive eyes diffused softness and gentle gaiety over his features. His manners displayed the grace and dignity, the delicacy and propriety, which belong to the well-born, when their understandings are cultivated by learning, and their hearts enlarged by the practices of virtue. Eloquent, witty, judicious, and pleasing, he adapted himself to the time and person with whom he conversed, and was admired and beloved by all.