That was a touching tribute from the elder to the younger--tribute touching, whether wrung, perforce, from a proudly humble, or freely offered by a simply magnanimous heart--when, like John the Baptist speaking of Jesus, Bourdaloue, growing old, said of Massillon, enjoying his swiftly crescent renown: "He must increase, and I must decrease." It was a true presentiment of the comparative fortune of fame that impended for these two men. It was not, however, in the same path, but in a different, that Massillon outran Bourdaloue. In his own sphere, that of unimpassioned appeal to reason and to conscience, Bourdaloue is still without a rival. No one else, certainly, ever earned, so well as he, the double title which his epigrammatic countrymen were once fond of bestowing upon him--"The king of preachers, and the preacher of kings." Jean Baptiste MASSILLON became priest by his own internal sense of vocation to the office, against the preference of his family that he should become, like his father, a notary. He seems to have been by nature sincerely modest in spirit. He had to be forced into the publicity of a preaching career at Paris. His ecclesiastical superior peremptorily required at his hands the sacrifice of his wish to be obscure. He at once filled Paris with his fame. The inevitable consequence followed. He was summoned to preach before the king at Versailles. Here he received, as probably he deserved, that celebrated compliment in epigram from Louis XIV.: "In hearing some preachers, I feel pleased with them; in hearing you, I feel displeased with myself." It must not, however, be supposed that Massillon preached like a prophet Nathan saying to King David, "Thou art the man"; or like a John the Baptist saying to King Herod, "It is not lawful for _thee_ to have _her_"; or like a John Knox denouncing Queen Mary. Massillon, if he was stern, was suavely stern. He complimented the king. The sword with which he wounded was wreathed with flowers. It is difficult not to feel that some unspoken understanding subsisted between the preacher and the king, which permitted the king to separate the preacher from the man, when Massillon used that great plainness of speech to his sovereign. The king did not, however, often invite this master of eloquence to make the royal conscience displacent with itself. Bourdaloue was ostensibly as outspoken as Massillon; but somehow that Jesuit preacher contented the king to be his hearer during as many as ten annual seasons, against the one or two only that Massillon preached at court before Louis.