The years kept slipping past as the years will. Twelve summers had come,
and twelve times had autumn leaves known their time to fall. Madame Guyon
was again in prison. A stranger was Archbishop of Cambrai: Fenelon no
longer a counselor of kings--a tutor of royalty. His voice was silenced,
his pen chained. He was allowed to retire to a rural parish. There he
lived with the peasants--revered, beloved. The country where he dwelt was
battle-scarred and bleeding; the smoke of devastation still hung over it.
Not a family but had been robbed of its best. Death had stalked rampant.
Fenelon shared the poverty of the people, their lowliness, their sorrows.
All the tragedy of their life was his; he said to them, "I know, I know!"

Twelve years of Madame Guyon's life were spent in prison. Toward the last
she was allowed to live in nominal freedom. But despotism, with savage
leer and stealthy step, saw that Fenelon was kept far away. In those
declining days, when the shadows were lengthening toward the east, her
time and talents were given to teaching the simple rudiments of knowledge
to the peasantry, to alleviating their material wants and to ministering
to the sick. It was a forced retirement, and yet it was a retirement that
was in every way in accord with her desires. But in spite of the
persecution that followed her, and the obloquy heaped upon her name, and
the bribe of pardon if she would but recant, she never retracted nor
wavered in her inward or outward faith, even in the estimation of a hair.
The firm reticence as to the supreme secrets of her life, and her
steadfast loyalty to that which she honestly believed was truth, must ever
command the affectionate admiration of all those who prize integrity of
mind and purity of purpose, who hold fast to the divinity of love, and who
believe in the things unseen which are eternal.

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