I maintain that this stroke of the pen, given by me against my conscience, from a cowardly policy, would render me forever infamous, and unworthy of my ministry and my position." Fenelon no longer submitted his reason and his conduct, then, to the judgment of Bossuet; he recognized in him an adversary, but he still spoke of him with profound veneration.

"Fear not," he writes to Madame de Maintenon, "that I should gainsay M.de Meaux; I shall never speak of him but as of my master, and of his propositions but as the rule of faith." Fenelon was at Cambrai, being regular in the residence which removed him for nine months in the year from the court and the children of France, when there appeared his _Explication des Maximes des Saints sur la Vie Interieure_ (Exposition of the Maxims of the Saints touching the Inner Life), almost at the same moment as Bossuet's _Instruction sur les Etats d' Oraison_ (Lessons on States of Orison).

Fenelon's book appeared as dangerous as those of Madame Guyon; he himself submitted it to the pope, and was getting ready to repair to Rome to defend his cause, when the king wrote to him, "I do not think proper to allow you to go to Rome; you must, on the contrary, repair to your diocese, whence I forbid you to go away; you can send to Rome your pleas in justification of your book." Fenelon departed to an exile which was to last as long as his life; on his departure, he wrote to Madame de Maintenon, "I shall depart hence, madame, to-morrow, Friday, in obedience to the king.

My greatest sorrow is to have wearied him and to displease him.

I shall not cease, all the days of my life, to pray God to pour His graces upon him.