I am always spoken to when the question is of them; and if I were better informed, I should be bolder." "It is said that you meddle too little with business," Fenelon wrote to her in 1694; "your mind is better calculated for it than you suppose.

You ought to direct your whole endeavors to giving the king views tending to peace, and especially to the relief of the people, to moderation, to equity, to mistrust of harsh and violent measures, to horror for acts of arbitrary authority, and finally to love of the Church, and to assiduity in seeking good pastors for it." Neither Fenelon nor Madame de Maintenon had seen in the revocation of the edict of Nantes "an act of arbitrary authority, or a harsh and violent measure." She was not inclined towards persecution, but she feared lest her moderation should be imputed to a remnant of prejudice in favor of her former religion, "and this it is," she would say, "which makes me approve of things quite opposed to my sentiments." An egotistical and cowardly prudence, which caused people to attribute to Madame de Maintenon, in the severities against the Huguenots, a share which she had not voluntarily or entirely assumed.
Whatever the apparent reserve and modesty with which it was cloaked, the real power of Madame de Maintenon over the king's mind peeped out more and more into broad daylight.

She promoted it dexterously by her extreme anxiety to please him, as well as by her natural and sincere attachment to the children whom she had brought up, and who had a place near the heart of Louis XIV.

Already the young Duke of Maine had been sent to the army at the dauphin's side; the king was about to have him married [August 29, 1692] to Mdlle.

de Charolais; carefully seeking for his natural children alliances amongst the princes of his blood, he had recently given Mdlle.