Before, however, the Duke of Burgundy was thus snatched away from the perilous prospect of a throne, his beloved teacher was parted from him, not indeed by death, but by what, to the archbishop's susceptible and suffering spirit, was worse than death, by "disgrace." The disgrace was such as has ever since engaged for its subject the interest, the sympathy, and the admiration of mankind. Fenelon lost the royal favor. That was all--for the present; but that was much. He was banished from court, and he ceased to be preceptor to the Duke of Burgundy. The king, in signal severity, used his own hand to strike Fenelon's name from the list of the household of his grandson and heir. The archbishop--for Fenelon had previously been made archbishop of Cambray--returned into his diocese as into an exile. But his cup of humiliation was by no means full. Bossuet will stain his own glory by following his exiled former pupil and friend, with hostile pontifical rage, to crush him in his retreat. The occasion was a woman, a woman with the charm of genius and of exalted character, a Christian, a saint, but a mystic--it was Madame Guyon. Madame Guyon taught that it was possible to love God for himself alone, purely and disinterestedly. Fenelon received the doctrine, and Madame Guyon was patronized by Madame de Maintenon. Bossuet scented heresy. He was too much a "natural man" to understand Madame Guyon. The king was like the prelate, his minister, in spirit, and in consequent incapacity. It was resolved that Fenelon must condemn Madame Guyon. But Fenelon would not. He was very gentle, very conciliatory, but in fine he would not. Controversy ensued, haughty, magisterial, domineering, on the part of Bossuet; on the part of Fenelon, meek, docile, suasive. The world wondered, and watched the duel. Fenelon finally did what king James's translators misleadingly make Job wish that his adversary had done--he wrote a book, "The Maxims of the Saints." In this book, he sought to show that the accepted and even canonized teachers of the Church had taught the doctrine for which, in his own case and in the case of Madame Guyon, condemnation was now invoked. Bossuet was pope at Paris: and he, in full presence, denounced to the monarch the heresy of Fenelon. At this moment of crisis for Fenelon, it happened that news was brought him of the burning of his mansion at Cambray with all his books and manuscripts. It will always be remembered that Fenelon only said: "It is better so than if it had been the cottage of a poor laboring-man."