Jacque Benigne Bossuet was born at Dijon, in Burgundy, in 1627. In an illustrious group of French Catholic preachers he occupied a foremost place. In beginning his sermons he was reserved and dignified, but as he moved forward and his passionate utterance captured his hearers, "he watched their rising emotion, the rooted glances of a thousand eyes filled him with a sort of divine frenzy, his notes became a burden and a hindrance, and with impetuous ardor he abandoned himself to the inspiration of the moment." To ripe scholarship Bossuet added a voice that was deep and sonorous, an imposing personality, and an animated and graceful style of gesture. Lamartine says he had "a voice which, like that of the thunder in the clouds, or the organ in the cathedral, had never been anything but the medium of power and divine persuasion to the soul; a voice which only spoke to kneeling auditors; a voice which spoke in the name of God, an authority of language unequaled upon earth, and against which the lowest murmur was impious and the smallest opposition blasphemy." He died in 1704. BOSSUET 1627-1704 THE FUNERAL SERMON ON THE DEATH OF THE GRANDE CONDÉ In beginning this address, in which I purpose to celebrate the immortal glory of Louis de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, I feel myself overweighted both by the grandeur of the subject and, to be frank, by the fruitlessness of the effort. What part of the inhabited world has not heard of the victories of the Prince de Condé and the wonders of his life? They are recounted everywhere; the Frenchman who boasts of them in the presence of the foreigner tells him nothing which the latter does not know; and in no matter how exalted a strain I might sound his praises, I should still feel that in your hearts you were convinced that I deserved the reproach of falling far short of doing him justice. An orator, feeble as he is, can not do anything for the perpetuation of the glory of extraordinary souls. Le Sage was right when he said that "their deeds alone can praise them"; no other praise is of any effect where great names are concerned; and it needs but the simple story of his deeds faithfully recorded to sustain the glory of the Prince de Condé.