esult to Mme. de Sable, but he may have
somewhat exaggerated her influence in this respect. From her retreat
at Port-Royal, she kept up a constant correspondence with her friends
all over France; she lived there until 1678, with but one intimate
friend, Mme. de Longueville.

Mme. de Sable had remarkable gifts; her mission in politics, religion,
and literature seems to have been to excite to action, to stimulate
and to bring out to its fullest value, the talents and genius of
others. In her modest salon, she inspired the great and illustrious
work which will keep her memory alive as long as the _Maxims_ and
_Pensees_ are read. Her name will be connected with that of Mme.
de Longueville, because of their ideal friendship, and with that of
Port-Royal because of her ardent and self-sacrificing support of it
in the time of its direst persecution, when any exhibition of sympathy
was dangerous in the extreme; and finally, her name will always be
connected with that small circle of French society of the seventeenth
century, which was noble, moral, and elevating to an unusual degree.

Somewhat later in the century a different movement was started by a
woman, which involved many of the highest in rank at court. This took
the form of a kind of mystical enthusiasm, running into a theory of
pure love, and was instigated by Mme. Guyon, a widow, still young, and
gifted with a lofty and subtile mind. After losing her husband, whom
she had converted to her religious views, she went, in 1680, to Paris
to educate her children. Becoming interested in religion, she went
to Geneva, where she became very intimate with a priest who was
her spiritual director, and whom she soon wholly subjected to her
influence. On account of their views on sanctification, they were
ordered to leave.

After travelling over Europe for a number of years, and writing
several works, including _Spiritual Torrents_ and _Short and Easy
Method of Making Orison with the Heart_, the widow returned to Paris,
with the intention of living in retirement; but so many persons of all
ranks sought her out, that she organized, for ladies of rank, meetings
for purposes of prayer and religious conversation. The Duchess of
Beauvilliers, the Duchess of Bethune, the Countess of Guiche, the
Countess of Chevreuse, and many others, with their husbands, became
her devoted adherents.

According to Mme. Guyon, prayer should lose the character of
supplication, and become simply the sile