et, and, in his sermon, soars on the
wings of Isaiah.

Everything inclines us to believe, for all that, that the astonishing
writer was the least part of Fenelon--he was superlatively the
_Director_. Who can say by what enchantment he bewitched souls, and
filled them with transport? We perceive traces of it in the infinite
charms of his correspondence, disfigured and adulterated as it is;[1]
no other has been more cruelly pruned, purged, and designedly obscured.
Yet in these fragments and scattered remains, seduction is still
omnipotent: besides a nobleness of manner, and an animated and refined
turn of thought, in which the man of power is very perceptible under
the robe of the apostle, there is also what is particularly his own, a
feminine delicacy that by no means excludes strength, and even in his
subtilty an indescribable tenderness that touches the heart. When a
youth, and before he was tutor to the Duke of Burgundy, he had, for a
long time, directed the _newly converted_. There he had the
opportunity of well studying woman's character, and of acquiring that
perfect knowledge of the female heart, in which he was unrivalled.

The impassioned interest they took in his fortune, the tears of his
little flock, the Duchesses of Chevreuse, Beauvilliers, and others,
when he missed the archbishopric of Paris, their constant fidelity to
this well-beloved guide during his exile at Cambrai, which ended only
with his death--all this fills up the void of the lost letters, and
conveys a strange idea of this all-powerful magician, whose invincible
magic defied every attack.

To introduce spirituality so refined and so exalted, and such a
pretension to supreme perfection into that world of outward propriety
and ceremonial at Versailles, and this, at the end of a reign in which
everything seemed rigidly frozen--was, indeed, a rash undertaking.
There was no question here of abandoning one's self, like Madame Guyon
in her retreat among the Alps, to the torrents of divine love. It was
necessary to have the appearance of common sense, and the forms of
reason even in the madness of love; it was expedient, as the ancient
comic writer says "_to run mad with rule and measure_." This is what
Fenelon attempted to do in the _Maxims of Saints_. The condemnation of
Molinos, and the imprisonment of Madame Guyon at Vincennes, were a
sufficient lesson: he declared himself, but with prudence, and though
perfectly decided, maintained an ou