It was, on the whole, a very barren victory for Bossuet; but he accepted it rather than run any further risk in the long-drawn-out contest, of which all parties were thoroughly weary. It had cost him dear in both reputation and character. No one now, however small his admiration for Fénelon, attempts to defend the steps which Bossuet took or the dishonorable means to which in his desperation he resorted to compass his end. He contended not lawfully, and deserves no crown. He showed an irritation, rancor, bitterness, and malignity most lamentable; used invective, artifice, and garbled quotations; sullied himself forever by the course he took. With brutal irony and savage harshness he hectored, threatened, plotted, violated confidences, and made accusations as base as they were reckless. He used without scruple secret writings which he had received from Madame Guyon, private letters written to him by Fénelon during their early intimacy, and a letter which, under the seal of friendship, Fénelon had written to Madame de Maintenon, and which in this trying hour she unfeelingly communicated to Bossuet, having entirely changed in her attitude toward him since the king’s animosity was evident. Bossuet’s personal charges against his amiable and estimable adversary, not believed by any one, showed the innate smallness of his nature, the desperate strait to which he was driven, and the degree to which he had let jealousy and rivalry of one greater than he take possession of his bosom. That he himself was of plebeian birth—a bar which kept him from the goal of his ambition in the cardinalate—while Fénelon was of the patricians, had doubtless something to do with it. He squandered his waning powers on a controversy which added no luster to his reputation, and brought him no nearer to the summit of his desires. Too late he realized that it was impossible to ruin such a man as Fénelon in the eyes of those who had learned to love him. He might be banished from the Vatican and from Versailles, silenced by the pope, and disgraced by the king, but he was cherished none the less in the hearts of the devout, idolized and adored as an oracle of piety and virtue.