on her
orthodoxy--Bossuet, De Noailles, and Tronson. The two latter were
charmed with her mild and teachable spirit. But the fierce Bossuet was
not yet satisfied; and as she put herself under his special direction
for a time, he consigned her to a convent at Meaux, and at length
required her to sign certain doctrinal articles, and a decree condemning
her books. To this last, however, a qualifying clause was appended, to
the effect that she had never intended to say anything contrary to the
spirit of the Church, not knowing that any other meaning could be given
to her words. In fact, while conceding to her Church the right to
condemn whatever it did not approve in her tenets, she held much the
same position as Galileo when his theory as to the movements of our
planet was condemned as heretical, and he capped his enforced
retractation with the quiet protest, "_E pur si muove_." In her letter
to her three ecclesiastical judges, dated "in August, 1694," she
courageously tells them, "I pray you, my lords, to remember that I am an
ignorant woman; that I have written my experiences in all good faith,
and that if I have explained myself badly, it is the result of my
ignorance. As regards the experiences, _they are real_." [1]

[Footnote 1: _La Vie_, troisieme partie, ch. xvi., 6.]

Bossuet at length appeared to be satisfied, and gave her a certificate
of her filial submissiveness to the Roman Catholic faith, and she
thought herself free to return to Paris. It was not perhaps the wisest
step to take; the bishop was displeased at it, as was also the bigoted
Madame de Maintenon. Madame Guyon went to live in privacy in a small
house in the Faubourg St. Antoine, where she hoped to be left in peace.
But her enemies got scent of her hiding-place, arrested her, and shut
her up in the Castle of Vincennes, whence, after a few weeks at
Vaugirard, she was transferred to the Bastille.

Of her life in this famous prison we have little or no detail. Like all
its unfortunate inmates, she was forbidden to reveal its secrets; but we
gather from her own words that, amid sickness and the many hardships of
her prison life, one of her severest trials was found in the rumours
which reached her of "the horrible outcry," outside the walls, against
herself and her sympathisers. But in this dark season she held fast her
confidence in God, and her spirit found utterance and relief in some of
those songs, full of love and trust, which are included in the