The correspondence continued, with confidence and deference on the part of the prince, with tender, sympathetic, far-sighted, paternal interest on the part of the archbishop, more and more concerned for the perils and temptations to which the prince was exposed in proportion as he saw him nearer to the throne and more exposed to the incense of the world.  “The right thing is to become the counsel of his Majesty,” he wrote to him on the death of the grand dauphin, “the father of the people, the comfort of the afflicted, the defender of the church; the right thing is to keep flatterers aloof and distrust them, to distinguish merit, seek it out and anticipate it, to listen to everything, believe nothing without proof, and, being placed above all, to rise superior to every one.  The right thing is to desire to be father and not master.  The right thing is not that all should be for one, but that one should be for all, to secure their happiness.”  A solemn and touching picture of an absolute monarch, submitting to God and seeking His will alone.  Fenelon had early imbued his pupil with the spirit of it; and the pupil appeared on the point of realizing it; but God at a single blow destroyed all these fair hopes.  “All my ties are broken,” said Fenelon; “I live but on affection, and of affection I shall die; we shall recover ere long that which we have not lost; we approach it every day with rapid strides; yet a little while, and there will be no more cause for tears.”  A week later he was dead, leaving amongst his friends, so diminished already by death, an immeasurable gap, and amongst his adversaries themselves the feeling of a great loss.  “I am sorry for the death of M. de Cambrai,” wrote Madame de Maintenon on the 10th of January, 1715; “he was a friend I lost through Quietism, but it is asserted that he might have done good service in the council, if things should be pushed so far.”  Fenelon had not been mistaken, when he wrote once upon a time to Madame de Maintenon, who consulted him about her defects, “You are good towards those for whom you have liking and esteem, but you are cold so soon as the liking leaves you; when you are frigid your frigidity is carried rather far, and, when you begin to feel mistrust, your heart is withdrawn too brusquely from those to whom you had shown confidence.”

Fenelon had never shown any literary prepossessions.  He wrote for his friends or for the Duke of Burgundy, lavishing the treasures of his mind and spirit upon his letters of spiritual guidance, composing, in order to convince the Duke of Orleans, his Traite de l’Existence de Dieu, indifferent as to the preservation of the sermons he preached every Sunday, paying more attention to the plans of government he addressed to the young dauphin than to the publication of his works.  Several were not collected until after his death.  In delivering their eulogy of him at the French Academy, neither M. de Boze, who succeeded him, nor M. Dacier, director of the Academy,