She easily persuaded him that the work was a carefully executed
satire directed against the ministers of the Court, and that even the King
himself was not spared. Malignant tongues asserted that Madame de
Montespan, the King's former mistress, might be recognised under the
guise of Calypso, Mademoiselle de Fontanges in Eucharis, the Duchess
of Bourgogne in Antiope, Louvois in Prothesilas, King James in Idomenee,
and Louis himself in Sesostris. This aroused that monarch's indignation.
Fenelon was banished from Court, and retired to Cambray, where he spent
the remaining years of his life, honoured by all, and beloved by his many
friends. Strangers came to listen to his words of piety and wisdom. He
performed his episcopal duties with a care and diligence worthy of the
earliest and purest ages of the Church, and in this quiet seclusion
contented himself in doing good to his fellow-creatures, in spite of the
opposition of the King, the censures of the Pope, and the vehement
attacks of his controversial foes Bossuet and the Jansenists. In addition
to his fatal book he wrote _Demonstration de l'existence de Dieu,
Refutation du Systeme de Malebranche_, and several other works.
The Jansenist Abbe Barral, in his _Dictionnaire Historique, Litteraire, et
Critique, des Hommes Celebres_, thus speaks of our author and his work:
"He composed for the instruction of the Dukes of Burgundy, Anjou, and
Berri several works; amongst others, the Telemachus--a singular book,
which partakes at once of the character of a romance and of a poem, and
which substitutes a prosaic cadence for versification.
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