And so they were married by a bishop, with two priests and three curates to assist.  The ceremony was held at the great stone church; and as the procession came out, the verger had a hard time to keep the crowd back, so that the little girls in white could go before and strew flowers in their pathway.  The organ pealed, and the chimes clanged and rang as if the tune and the times were out of joint; then other bells from other parts of the old town answered, and across the valley rang mellow and soft the chapel-bell of Montargis Castle.

Jeanne was seated in a carriage—­how she got there she never knew; by her side sat Jacques Guyon.  The post-boys were lashing their horses into a savage run, like devils running away with the souls of innocents, and behind clattered the mounted, liveried servant.  People on the sidewalks waved good-bys and called God-bless-yous.  Soon the sleepy old town was left behind and the horses slowed down to a lazy trot.  Jeanne looked back, like Lot’s wife:  only a church-spire could be seen.  She hoped that she might be turned into a pillar of salt—­but she wasn’t.  She crouched into the corner of the seat and cried a good honest cry.

And Monsieur Jacques Guyon smiled and muttered to himself, “Her father said she was a bit stubborn, but I’ll see that she gets over it!”

And this was over three hundred years ago.  It doesn’t seem like it, but it was.

* * * * *

Read the lives of great men and you will come to the conclusion that it is harder to find a gentleman than a genius.  While the clock ticks off the seconds, count on your fingers—­within five minutes, if you can—­five such gentlemen as Sir Philip Sidney!  Of course, I know before you speak that Fenelon will be the first on your tongue.  Fenelon, the low-voiced, the mild, the sympathetic, the courtly, the gracious!  Fenelon, favored by the gods with beauty and far-reaching intellect!  Fenelon, who knew the gold of silence.  Fenelon, on whose lips dwelt grace, and who by the magic of his words had but to speak to be believed and to be beloved.

When Louis the Little made that most audacious blunder which cost France millions in treasure and untold loss in men and women, Fenelon wrote to the Prime Minister:  “These Huguenots have many virtues that must be acknowledged and conserved.  We must hold them by mildness.  We can not produce conformity by force.  Converts made in this manner are hypocrites.  No power is great enough to bind the mind—­thought forever escapes.  Give civil liberty to all, not by approving all religions, but by permitting in patience what God allows.”

“You shall go as missionary to these renegades!” was the answer—­half-ironical, half-earnest.

“I will go only on one condition.”

“And that is?”

“That from my province you withdraw all armed men—­all sign of compulsion of every sort!”

Fenelon was of noble blood, but his sympathies were ever with the people.  The lowly, the weak, the oppressed, the persecuted—­these were ever the objects of his solicitude—­these were first in his mind.