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On May 8, 1696, La Bruyère dined with Antoine Bossuet, the bishop's elder brother; after dinner he took out the MSS. from his pocket, and read extracts to his host. Two days afterwards, after walking in the garden at Versailles, he had a stroke, and two days after that he died. He had had no premonition of illness, and the rumour went round that the Quietists had poisoned him.
Cousin has just revived the career of Madame de Longueville, which is identified with the cabals, financial expedients, and war of the Fronde; tournaments, which formed so striking a feature in the diversions of Louis XIV.'s court, owed their revival to the whim of one of his mistresses; Montespan fostered a brood of satirists, and Maintenon one of devotees, while that extraordinary religious controversy which initiated the sect of the Quietists had its origin in the example and agency of Madame Guyon.
In such a sequestered region books and papers were scarce, and he had access only to a few volumes written by quietists and mystics, and to that great mine of sacred literature, the Holy Bible. The seeds of knowledge sown by these books in the rich soil of this young heart were fertilized by the society of noble men, virtuous women, and natural surroundings of exquisite beauty.
Is it wonderful that there have been quietists in the world ever since Christ's religion was first preached upon earth. Is it strange that there is a patient endurance and tranquil resignation, calm expectation of that which is to come on the further shore of the dark flowing river?
"This Princess was remarkably well-educated; she possessed a great deal of good, sound sense, and had profited by the instructions of some of the best German tutors during her very early years. It was the policy of her father, the Duke of Wirtemberg, who had a large family, to educate his children as 'quietists' in matters of religion.
This has been the true reason of mystical isolation in every age and country. So thought Macarius and the Christian fakeers of the Thebaid. So thought the medieval monks and nuns. So thought the German Quietists when they revolted from the fierce degradation of decaying Lutheranism. So are hundreds thinking now; so may thousands think ere long.
Some doctrine akin to that of the quietists seems to underlie the mysterious old phrases in which the Buddha's two teachers tried to explain their trances, and he left them for much the same reasons as led the Church to condemn Quietism. He did not say that the trances are bad; indeed he represented them as productive of happiness in a sense which Europeans can hardly follow.
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