The soul and mind of Fenelon were sympathetic; Bossuet, in writing for the grand-dauphin, was responsive to the requirements of his own mind, never to those of the boy’s with whose education he had been intrusted.

Fenelon also wrote Telemaque.  “It is a fabulous narrative,” he himself says, “in the form of an heroic poem, like Homer’s or Virgil’s, wherein I have set forth the principal actions that are meet for a prince whose birth points him out as destined to reign.  I did it at a time when I was charmed with the marks of confidence and kindness showered upon me by the king; I must have been not only the most ungrateful but the most insensate of men to have intended to put into it satirical and insolent portraits; I shrink from the bare idea of such a design.  It is true that I have inserted in these adventures all the verities necessary for government and all the defects that one can show in the exercise of sovereign power; but I have not stamped any of them with a peculiarity which would point to any portrait or caricature.  The more the work is read, the more it will be seen that I wished to express everything without depicting anybody consecutively; it is, in fact, a narrative done in haste, in detached pieces and at different intervals; all I thought of was to amuse the Duke of Burgundy, and, whilst amusing, to instruct him, without ever meaning to give the work to the public.”

Telemaque was published, without any author’s name and by an indiscretion of the copyist’s, on the 6th of April, 1699.  Fenelon was in exile at his diocese; public rumor before long attributed the work to him; the Maximes des Saints had just been condemned, Telemaque was seized, the printers were punished; some copies had escaped the police; the book was reprinted in Holland; all Europe read it, finding therein the allusions and undermeanings against which Fenelon defended himself.  Louis XIV. was more than ever angry with the archbishop.  “I cannot forgive M. de Cambrai for having composed the Telemaque,” Madame de Maintenon would say.  Fenelon’s disgrace, begun by the Maximes des Saints touching absolute (pure) love, was confirmed by his ideal picture of kingly power.  Chimerical in his theories of government, high-flown in his pious doctrines, Fenelon, in the conduct of his life as well as in his practical directions to his friends, showed a wisdom, a prudence, a tact which singularly belied the free speculations of his mind or his heart.  He preserved silence amid the commendations and criticisms of the Telemaque.  “I have no need and no desire to change my position,” he would say; “I am beginning to be old, and I am infirm; there is no occasion for my friends to ever commit themselves or to take any doubtful step on my account.  I never sought out the court; I was sent for thither.  I staid there nearly ten years without obtruding myself, without taking a single step on my own behalf, without asking the smallest favor, without meddling in any matter, and confining myself to answering conscientiously in all matters about which I was spoken to.  I was dismissed; all I have to do is to remain at peace in my own place.  I doubt not that, besides the matter of my condemned work, the policy of Telemaque was employed against me upon the king’s mind; but I must suffer and hold my tongue.”