The dauphin sometimes went thither to see him.

"Pray, sir," he had said to him, in his childhood, "take great care of me whilst I am little; I will of you when I am big." Assured of his righteousness as a priest and his fine tact as a man, the king appealed to Bossuet in the delicate conjunctures of his life.

It is related that it was the Bishop of Meaux who dissuaded him from making public his marriage with Madame de Maintenon.

She, more anxious for power than splendor, did not bear him any ill-will for it; amidst the various leanings of the court, divided as it was between Jansenism and Quietism, it was to the simple teaching of the Catholic church, represented by Bossuet, that she remained practically attached.

Right-minded and strong-minded, but a little cold-hearted, Madame de Maintenon could not suffer herself to be led away by the sublime excesses of the Jansenists or the pious reveries of Madame Guyon; the Jesuits had influence over her, without her being a slave to them; and that influence increased after the death of Bossuet.