Her friends were not idle, and finally, by the intercession of Madame de Miramion, Madame de Maisonfort, and the Duchesses Beauvilliers and Chevreuse, acting through Madame de Maintenon upon the king, Madame Guyon was released in October, 1688. On being set free she took up her residence at the house of Madame de Miramion, and resumed her labor for souls as opportunity presented itself. Early in 1690 her daughter was married to Count de Vaux, a man of high character, brother of the Duchess de Bethune and nephew of the Duchess de Charost; and as the child was scarcely fourteen she went to live with her a little way out of the city. Here Fénelon visited frequently, and when she had once more returned to Paris, hiring a private house for herself there in 1692, he met her much. What of her influence upon him? Those not in sympathy with her ideas, by whom indeed the inner things of the kingdom are pertly dubbed “nonsense,” have called her “the evil genius of his life,” and ascribed to her what they are pleased to term his ruin and downfall. We are very certain that he did not himself regard either it or her in that light. They had very much in common. There was the same hunger after the highest religious attainments, and their ideas as to the path were at bottom the same. Fénelon had the theological training which she lacked, and hence found difficulty with many of her expressions, which seemed to him objectionable and liable to misapprehension, as doubtless they were. But it seems altogether probable that at this time she was more advanced in the spiritual life, more perfectly taught of God, than he. Hence, in the extended correspondence which took place between them, covering a space of some two years or more, from its beginning in November, 1688, it is usually he who asks the questions and seeks for explanations. She responded with entire patience and deep religious insight, taking all possible pains, as may well be supposed, with so distinguished yet so docile a pupil. To one with so clear an intellect and so sympathetic a spirit she could express her thought with the utmost freedom, and his enlightened, powerful mind, untrammeled by the prejudices which so often prevented—and always prevents—correct perceptions, readily saw the validity of her views. She herself says: “I was enabled in our conversations so fully to explain everything to Fénelon that he gradually entered into the views which the Lord had led me to entertain, and finally gave them his unqualified assent. The persecutions which he has since suffered are the evidence of the sincerity of his belief.” If he was greatly indebted to her, as everything appears to prove—and as many other eminent men have been to godly women—for getting into a much closer conformity to the will of God, it is no wonder that he was never willing to unite with her enemies in her condemnation, although every earthly motive was on that side.