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More than a hundred years afterwards the pious Bossuet thanked God for the frightful slaughter of the Huguenots which followed the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
She was anxious to write with her own hand the account of her conversion, and addressed it to the celebrated Rancé, the Abbé of La Trappe. It was from that narrative that Bossuet drew the source of his own.
Augustine, and the "Lives of the Saints," which he found in his father's scanty library, as well as the works of the great French preachers, Bossuet and Fenelon. Such early acquaintance with these and many other masterpieces of higher literature, we may be sure, helped greatly to mould the lad's mind into that grand and sober shape which it finally acquired.
Bossuet, a great opponent of mystics, had already remarked: "One of the characteristics of these authors is the pushing of allegories to the extreme limit." With warm imagination, having at their disposal overexcited senses, they are lavish of changes of expressions and figures, hoping thereby to explain the world's mysteries.
The text was the Vulgate, a rivulet of Latin text surrounded by meadows of marginal comments of the Fathers translated into French, the whole presided over, for the edification of the young novice, to whom my copy evidently belonged, by a distinguished Monseigneur who, in French of the time of Bossuet, told exactly how these young minds should understand the wisdom of Solomon, told it with a magisterial style which suggested that Solomon lived long ago and, yet, was one of the pillars of the church.
The French bishops were of independent spirit; the Archbishop of Paris, Francis de Harlay, was on bad terms with Pope Innocent XI.; Bossuet managed to moderate the discussions, and kept within suitable bounds the declaration which he could not avoid. He had always taught and maintained what was proclaimed by the assembly of the clergy of France, "that St.
"I write this for the people," he said, "in order that, the character of M. de Cambrai being known, his eloquence may, with God's permission, no more impose upon anybody." Fenelon replied with a vigor, a fullness, and a moderation which brought men's minds over to him. "You do more for me by the excess of your accusations," said he to Bossuet, "than I could do myself.
The Bishop of Meaux, sturdy personage, voluntarily undertook the mission, and went to it with a tranquil brow, for he loved such tasks. To his hoarse and funereal voice Soeur Louise only replied with groans and tears. She fell upon the floor without consciousness, and M. Bossuet went on obstinately preaching Christian resignation and stoicism to a senseless mother who heard him not.
This explains the life of such men as Walter Scott, Cuvier, Voltaire, Newton, Buffon, Bayle, Bossuet, Leibnitz, Lopez de Vega, Calderon, Boccacio, Aretino, Aristotle in short, every man who delighted, governed, or led his contemporaries. A man may and ought to pride himself more on his will than on his talent.
The highest names in this department would not, to a foreign ear, carry with them any of that significance or promise which surrounds the names of Jeremy Taylor or Barrow, Bossuet or Bourdaloue, to those even who have no personal acquaintance with their works.
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