four
volumes of her poetical works.

VII.

LAST YEARS.

She was confined in the Bastille for four years, and when at last, in
1702, she was released, her health was completely ruined by the
privations she had suffered, the bitter cold of winter, and in the
warmer weather the poisonous exhalations from the stagnant waters of the
moat. When once more she issued into the sweet air of liberty, "My
afflicted spirit," she says, "began to breathe and recover itself; but
my body was from that time sick and borne down with all sorts of
infirmities." Even now, however, she was not free to go where she liked.
After a brief visit to her daughter in Paris, she was required to take
up her residence at Blois, a hundred miles south-west, and there, in
complete retirement, she spent her remaining days, still writing cheery
words of counsel to her disciples in France and other lands, and
enjoying spells of happy converse with the steadfast friends who sought
her out in her exile.

She lived on in peace and quiet, though often in pain and weakness, for
fifteen years after her release from the Bastille. Her final release
from all earthly trials and sorrows took place on June 9, 1717, when she
had entered about three months into her seventieth year. That her
beautiful spirit of resignation was maintained to the last, and that her
faith was pure and steadfast, we have proof in these expressions in her
will, written a short time before her death: "Thou knowest that there is
nothing in heaven or in earth that I desire but Thee alone. In Thy
hands, O God, I leave my soul, not relying for my salvation on any good
that is in me, but solely on Thy mercies and the merits and sufferings
of my Lord Jesus Christ."

We find here no trace of that reliance on the Virgin Mary, or that
frequent clamouring for her interest and intercession, which then formed
and still forms so integral a portion of the daily routine of Romish
worship. It is a remarkable feature of Madame Guyon's religious life
that, in an idolatrous age, her faith constantly soared straight up to
God, ignoring the mediation of the Virgin and the saints, and regarding
the priests themselves, not as intermediaries between Christ and her
soul, but simply as her appointed counsellors and guides on the road to
heaven. We need not wonder that such bitterness was shown towards her,
and that no effort was spared to suppress teaching so dangerous to the
very foundations of the ancient