Of her life in this famous prison we have little or no detail.  Like all its unfortunate inmates, she was forbidden to reveal its secrets; but we gather from her own words that, amid sickness and the many hardships of her prison life, one of her severest trials was found in the rumours which reached her of “the horrible outcry,” outside the walls, against herself and her sympathisers.  But in this dark season she held fast her confidence in God, and her spirit found utterance and relief in some of those songs, full of love and trust, which are included in the four volumes of her poetical works.

VII.

LAST YEARS.

She was confined in the Bastille for four years, and when at last, in 1702, she was released, her health was completely ruined by the privations she had suffered, the bitter cold of winter, and in the warmer weather the poisonous exhalations from the stagnant waters of the moat.  When once more she issued into the sweet air of liberty, “My afflicted spirit,” she says, “began to breathe and recover itself; but my body was from that time sick and borne down with all sorts of infirmities.”  Even now, however, she was not free to go where she liked.  After a brief visit to her daughter in Paris, she was required to take up her residence at Blois, a hundred miles south-west, and there, in complete retirement, she spent her remaining days, still writing cheery words of counsel to her disciples in France and other lands, and enjoying spells of happy converse with the steadfast friends who sought her out in her exile.

She lived on in peace and quiet, though often in pain and weakness, for fifteen years after her release from the Bastille.  Her final release from all earthly trials and sorrows took place on June 9, 1717, when she had entered about three months into her seventieth year.  That her beautiful spirit of resignation was maintained to the last, and that her faith was pure and steadfast, we have proof in these expressions in her will, written a short time before her death:  “Thou knowest that there is nothing in heaven or in earth that I desire but Thee alone.  In Thy hands, O God, I leave my soul, not relying for my salvation on any good that is in me, but solely on Thy mercies and the merits and sufferings of my Lord Jesus Christ.”

We find here no trace of that reliance on the Virgin Mary, or that frequent clamouring for her interest and intercession, which then formed and still forms so integral a portion of the daily routine of Romish worship.  It is a remarkable feature of Madame Guyon’s religious life that, in an idolatrous age, her faith constantly soared straight up to God, ignoring the mediation of the Virgin and the saints, and regarding the priests themselves, not as intermediaries between Christ and her soul, but simply as her appointed counsellors and guides on the road to heaven.  We need not wonder that such bitterness was shown towards her, and that no effort was spared to suppress teaching so dangerous to the very foundations of the ancient edifice of error.