Nevertheless they were happy who, in that evil time, fell into the hands of Fénelon. He had vast patience, he had a statesman's eye, he had an abundant horror of sacrilege. Only one class was beyond the pale of his charity-to the deserters and irreclaimable heretics he would show no mercy; for them there was the rigeur des peines, solitary confinement, deportation to other provinces, where they might serve as hostages on the good behaviour of their families, even deportation to Canada.1 Their steadfastness won no admiration from him. Others might be unpleasantly reminded by their tortures of the sufferings of the Early Church, but Fénelon was only struck by the different bearing of the victims: the martyrs had been humble and fearless and without dissimulation; the Huguenots were stubborn and cowardly, and ready for any hypocrisy.2 The remainder he would treat with a cautious kindness, with a severity that was not rigour. Like disobedient children they must see the rod always uplifted over them; their conventicles must be prohibited, their heretical literature taken away. Their children must be forced to go to Catholic schools; they themselves must be driven to Mass by vague threats, to sermon by fines large enough to be galling but insufficient to cause desertion.3 On the other hand Fénelon begged for certain graces from the Government; their clergy must be equal in capacity and learning to the ejected pastors; the State must furnish supplies and competent teachers for their schools; there must be free distribution of New Testaments and books of Catholic piety printed in large type; alms should be given to the well-disposed according to the excellent system of the Consistories. And Fénelon even brought down suspicion. on his head by leaving out of his sermons the customary Invocation to the Virgin, and by proposing that some special prayers and Bible-reading should be added to the religious services attended by the heretics." 1 Douen, p. 331. p. 328. 2 Wks., vii. p. 493. 'Douen, p. 332. 5 Wks., vii. p. 196, see p. 494. But he knew that the harvest was still far from ripe. Very few were really converted, though the opinions of all were profoundly shaken, and many held back out of mere shame-facedness or irresolution. The resistance of these last, he thought, would be overcome by a few little civilities and indulgences on the part of the Government, but with the majority progress would be slow indeed-there was no hope but patient perseverance.1 Weariness of their present state and confidence in their clergy would do much, but habit would do more; they would in time become accustomed to the Catholic services, and-such is human nature !—would be ashamed of going to church only to save payment of a fine. But there must be no forcing of consciences, no throwing of the body into a sewer because a man had died without the sacraments; such violence might make them crowd to the altar, but it would be only at the price of appalling sacrilege and hypocrisy.3 To us this measure of clemency seems bare and scanty enough; in Fénelon's own time it was both unusual and effective. His counsels of mercy had weight with the Minister, and led to the suppression of various abuses, civil as well as ecclesiastical; they manifestly gained for him the affection of his proselytes, and, stirring up against him the bile of the more rigid Catholics, seem to have stood in the way of his early promotion to a Bishopric. Yet the Saintonge Mission, on the whole, is a dark page in Fénelon's life. Those whose view of history is still "a study in snow and ink, tender innocents on the one side, and on the other bloody persecutors," will not long hesitate over their verdict; and even more tolerant spirits may find something unpleasing in this young ecclesiastical statesman, so fertile in expedients, so ready to base his counsels of mercy, not on Christian feeling, but on policy, so keen to make his wisdom and successes tell in his own favour at the Court. Or they may ask, with Fénelon's greatest living critic, whether his zealous approval of the Revocation shows 1 Douen, p. 323. 2 p. 327. 3 p. 316. a really high degree of statesmanship, whether the extermination of these sturdy religionists made in the best interests of Catholicism itself, whether the "purely metaphysical delight of hearing God's praises sung everywhere in Latin" was worth the loss of the strongest nerve in French morality.1 1 See Brunetière, Études Critiques, v. pp. 212 and ff. CHAPTER III EARLY OCCUPATIONS AND FRIENDSHIPS Both our nature and condition require, that each particular man should make particular provision for himself.—Bishop Butler, Twelfth Sermon. ་་ γου OU will be unfaithful to God," once wrote Fénelon to Mme. de Maintenon, “if you hide under a bushel the light He has set upon a candle-stick," and certainly the lack of a reasonable worldly self-assertiveness is one of the last 'infidelities' that can be laid to Fénelon's own account. As evidence to the contrary, all his solemn disclaimers, his energetic preachings of Humility, go for nothing was there ever a born diplomatist, more especially if he were a méridional, a son of the quick-blooded boastful South of France, who did not declare that only main force had dragged him to Court, away out of a beloved obscurity and refinement; or is it upon his own failings and vices that the lash of the honest preacher falls least heavily? Surprise Fénelon in a moment of confidence, and he will answer that the world still flatters him a little, much as he hates and despises it; he will advise his favourite nephew to be detached from it by religion, yet understand the need of keeping it his friend, to choose his companions, 'not for their virtue only, but for merit set off by social position, or even a certain rank.'2 From his youth up, he held it his duty-and later, when he was old and far from the Court, it became his much-loved nephew's after him to build up once more the shattered fortunes of their house. For the Fénelons were many and poor, most of them, too, feeble ineffectual creatures, who 1 Wks., vii. p. 348. 2 Ibid., pp. 432, 447. |