When Louis XIV. placed his grandson, the young Duke of Burgundy, under the care of the Duke of Beauvilliers, the Duke of Beauvilliers chose Fenelon for teacher of the pupil who was heir presumptive to the throne.  Fenelon’s “Fables” were written as part of his educational work.  He wrote also for the young Duke of Burgundy his “Telemaque”—­used only in Ms.—­and his “Dialogues of the Dead.”  While thus living in high favour at Court, Fenelon sought nothing for himself or his friends, although at times he was even in want of money.  In 1693—­as preceptor of a royal prince rather than as author—­Fenelon was received into the French Academy.  In 1694 Fenelon was made Abbot of Saint-Valery, and at the end of that year he wrote an anonymous letter to Louis XIV. upon wrongful wars and other faults committed in his reign.  A copy of it has been found in Fenelon’s handwriting.  The king may not have read it, or may not have identified the author, who was not stayed by it from promotion in February of the next year (1695) to the Archbishopric of Cambray.  He objected that the holding of this office was inconsistent with his duties as preceptor of the King’s grandchildren.  Louis replied that he could live at Court only for three months in the year, and during the other nine direct the studies of his pupils from Cambray.

Bossuet took part in the consecration of his friend Fenelon as Archbishop of Cambray; but after a time division of opinion arose.  Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Mothe Guyon became in 1676 a widow at the age of twenty-eight, with three children, for whose maintenance she gave up part of her fortune, and she then devoted herself to the practice and the preaching of a spiritual separation of the soul from earthly cares, and rest in God.  She said with Galahad, “If I lose myself, I save myself.”  Her enthusiasm for a pure ideal, joined to her eloquence, affected many minds.  It provoked opposition in the Church and in the Court, which was for the most part gross and self-seeking.  Madame Guyon was attacked, even imprisoned.  Fenelon felt the charm of her spiritual aspiration, and, without accepting its form, was her defender.  Bossuet attacked her views.  Fenelon published “Maxims of the Saints on the Interior Life.”  Bossuet wrote on “The States of Prayer.”  These were the rival books in a controversy about what was called “Quietism.”  Bossuet afterwards wrote a “Relation sur le Quietisme,” of which Fenelon’s copy, charged with his own marginal comments, is in the British Museum.  In March, 1699, the Pope finally decided against Fenelon, and condemned his “Maxims of the Saints.”  Fenelon read from his pulpit the brief of condemnation, accepted the decision of the Pope, and presented to his church a piece of gold plate, on which the Angel of Truth was represented trampling many errors under foot, and among them his own “Maxims of the Saints.”  At Court, Fenelon was out of favour.  “Telemaque,” written for the young Duke of Burgundy, had not been