the struggle, his
submission, full of dignity, after the papal decision. The mind of
Bossuet was the greater; the spirit of Fenelon was the nobler and more
deeply pious. "I cannot consent to have my book defended even
indirectly," he wrote to one of his friends on the 21st of July, 1699.
"In God's name, speak not of me but to God only, and leave men to think
as they please; as for me, I have no object but silence and peace after
my unreserved submission."

Fenelon was not detached from the world and his hopes to quite such an
extent as he would have had it appear. He had educated the Duke of
Burgundy, who remained passionately attached to him, and might hope for a
return of prosperity. He remained in the silence and retirement of his
diocese, with the character of an able and saintly bishop, keeping open
house, grandly and simply, careful of the welfare of the soldiery who
passed through Cambrai, adored by his clergy and the people. "Never a
word about the court, or about public affairs of any sort that could be
found fault with, or any that smacked the least in the world of baseness,
regret, or flattery," writes St. Simon; "never anything that could give
a bare hint of what he had been or might be again. He was a tall, thin
man, well made, pale, with a large nose, eyes from which fire and
intellect streamed like a torrent, and a physiognomy such that I have
never seen any like it, and there was no forgetting it when it had been
seen but once. It combined everything, and there was no conflict of
opposites in it. There were gravity and gallantry, the serious and the
gay; it savored equally of the learned doctor, the bishop, and the great
lord; that which appeared on its surface, as well as in his whole person,
was refinement, intellect, grace, propriety, and, above all, nobility.
It required an effort to cease looking at him. His manners corresponded
therewith in the same proportion, with an ease which communicated it to
others; with all this, a man who never desired to show more wits than
they with whom he conversed, who put himself within everybody's range
without ever letting it be perceived, in such wise that nobody could drop
him, or fight shy of him, or not want to see him again. It was this rare
talent, which he possessed to the highest degree, that kept his friends
so completely attached to him all his life, in spite of his downfall, and
that, in their dispersion, brought them together to speak of him,