The book itself, strictly speaking, was not condemned, but only twenty-three propositions which purported to be extracted from it. The pope took pains to say, and to have it clearly understood, that they were condemned, not in the sense which they might bear or in the sense in which they were explained by Fénelon himself. The propositions were said to be condemned because, not being worded in conformity with the author’s real intentions, they might insensibly lead the faithful to errors already condemned by the Catholic Church; because they contained words which, in the sense that more immediately presented itself were rash, ill-sounding, offensive to pious ears, and erroneous. The cardinals refused to associate the name of heretic, or of anything resembling heresy, with Fénelon—his name, indeed, was not once mentioned in the brief—and they absolutely rejected the usual appendage to a brief of condemnation, an order for the book to be burned. Very little was really decided. The words were very gentle, and in important ways noncommittal. Disinterestedness in the larger sense was neither asserted nor denied; all that was done was to prune Fénelon’s system of what might be considered its extravagances. In pronouncing, on the whole, against the “Maxims,” Rome had not really declared for Bossuet. Fénelon could lawfully tell his friends that disinterestedness was not condemned, but only its exaggerated statement; self-interest had not been made an essential condition of our love of God,—it was still possible to love Him for Himself, provided that hope and desire of heaven were not habitually of set purpose excluded. All this soothed the sorrows of the friends of Fénelon’s, as it was designed to do, and considerably mortified his enemies, which mortification was increased by a _bon mot_ of the pope, which was soon in every mouth, that “Fénelon was in fault for too great love of God; and his enemies equally in fault for too little love of their neighbor.” The pope, indeed, had repeatedly called Fénelon “a very great archbishop, most pious, most holy, most learned;” and he gave to the Abbé de Chanterac every indication of the extreme reluctance with which he moved in the matter.