and natural in his meditations as well as in his style.  In spite of Flechier’s eloquence in certain funeral orations, posterity has decided against the modesty of the Archbishop of Cambrai, who said at the death of the Bishop of Nimes, in 1710, “We have lost our master.”  In his retirement or his exile, after Bossuet’s death, it was around Fenelon that was concentrated all the lustre of the French episcopate, long since restored to the respect and admiration it deserved.

Fenelon was born in Perigord, at the castle of Fenelon, on the 6th of August, 1651.  Like Cardinal Retz he belonged to an ancient and noble house, and was destined from his youth for the church.  Brought up at the seminary of St. Sulpice, lately founded by M. Olier, he for a short time conceived the idea of devoting himself to foreign missions; his weak health and his family’s opposition turned him ere long from his purpose, but the preaching of the gospel amongst the heathen continued to have for him an attractionn which is perfectly depicted in one of the rare sermons of his which have been preserved.  He had held himself modestly aloof, occupied with confirming new Catholics in their conversion or with preaching to the Protestants of Poitou; he had written nothing but his Traite de l’Education des Filles, intended for the family of the Duke of Beauvilliers, and a book on the ministere du pasteur.  He was in bad odor with Harlay, Archbishop of Paris, who had said to him curtly one day, “You want to escape notice, M. Abbe, and you will;” nevertheless, when Louis XIV. chose the Duke of Beauvilliers as governor to his grandson, the Duke of Burgundy, the duke at once called Fenelon, then thirty-eight years of age, to the important post of preceptor.

Whereas the grand-dauphin, endowed with ordinary intelligence, was indolent and feeble, his son was, in the same proportion, violent, fiery, indomitable.  “The Duke of Burgundy,” says St. Simon, “was a born demon (naquit terrible), and in his early youth caused fear and trembling.  Harsh, passionate, even to the last degree of rage against inanimate things, madly impetuous, unable to bear the least opposition, even from the hours and the elements, without flying into furies enough to make you fear that everything inside him would burst; obstinate to excess, passionately fond of all pleasures, of good living, of the chase madly, of music with a sort of transport, and of play too, in which he could not bear to lose; often ferocious, naturally inclined to cruelty, savage in raillery, taking off absurdities with a patness which was killing; from the height of the clouds he regarded men as but atoms to whom he bore no resemblance, whoever they might be.  Barely did the princes his brothers appear to him intermediary between himself and the human race, although there had always been an affectation of bringing them all three up in perfect equality; wits, penetration, flashed from every part of him, even in his transports; his repartees were astounding, his replies always went to the point and deep down, even in his mad fits; he made child’s play of the most abstract sciences; the extent and vivacity of his wits were prodigious, and hindered him from applying himself to one thing at a time, so far as to render him incapable of it.”