Every tongue was held within range of King Louis XIV.  It was only on the 22d of December, 1701, four years after Fenelon’s departure, that the Duke of Burgundy thought he might write to him in the greatest secrecy:  “At last, my dear archbishop, I find a favorable opportunity of breaking the silence I have kept for four years.  I have suffered many troubles since, but one of the greatest has been that of being unable to show you what my feelings towards you were during that time, and that my affection increased with your misfortunes, instead of being chilled by them.  I think with real pleasure on the time when I shall be able to see you again, but I fear that this time is still a long way off.  It must be left to the will of God, from whose mercy I am always receiving new graces.  I have been many times unfaithful to Him since I saw you, but He has always done me the grace of recalling me to Him, and I have not, thank God, been deaf to His voice.  I continue to study all alone, although I have not been doing so in the regular way for the last two years, and I like it more than ever.  But nothing gives me more pleasure than metaphysics and ethics, and I am never tired of working at them.  I have done some little pieces myself, which I should very much like to be in a position to send you, that you might correct them as you used to do my themes in old times.  I shall not tell you here how my feelings revolted against all that has been done in your case, but we must submit to the will of God and believe that all has happened for our good.  Farewell, my dear archbishop.  I embrace you with all my heart; I ask your prayers and your blessing. —­Louis.”

“I speak to you of God and yourself only,” answered Fenelon in a letter full of wise and tender counsels; it is no question of me.  Thank God, I have a heart at ease; my heaviest cross is that I do not see you, but I constantly present you before God in closer presence than that of the senses.  I would give a thousand lives like a drop of water to see you such as God would have you.”

Next year, in 1702, the king gave the Duke of Burgundy the command of the army in Flanders.  He wrote to Fenelon, “I cannot feel myself so near you without testifying my joy thereat, and, at the same time, that which is caused by the king’s permission to call upon you on my way; he has, however, imposed the condition that I must not see you in private.  I shall obey this order, and yet I shall be able to talk to you as much as I please, for I shall have with me Saumery, who will make the third at our first interview after five years’ separation.”  The archbishop was preparing to leave Cambrai so as not to be in the prince’s way; he now remained, only seeing the Duke of Burgundy, however, in the presence of several witnesses; when he presented him with his table-napkin at supper, the prince raised his voice, and, turning to his old master, said, with a touching reminiscence of his childhood’s passions, “I know what I owe you; you know what I am to you.”