at, as preacher, he was using the "holy freedom of the pulpit" to
launch those blank fulminations of his at sin in high places, at sin
even in the highest, and all the briefer while that, as confessor to
Madame de Maintenon, he was influencing the policy of Louis XIV.

No scandal of any sort attaches to the reputation of Louis Bourdaloue.
He was a man of spotless fame,--unless it be a spot on his fame that he
could please the most selfish of sinful monarchs well enough to be that
monarch's chosen preacher during a longer time than any other pulpit
orator whatever was tolerated at Versailles. He is described by all who
knew him as a man of gracious spirit. If he did not reprobate and
denounce the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, that was rather of the
age than of Bourdaloue.

Sainte-Beuve, in a remarkably sympathetic appreciation of
Bourdaloue,--free, contrary to the critic's wont, from hostile
insinuation even,--regards it as part of the merit of this preacher that
there is, and that there can be, no biography of him. His public life
is summed up in simply saying that he was a preacher. During thirty-four
laborious and fruitful years he preached the doctrines of the Church;
and this is the sole account to be given of him, except, indeed, that in
the confessional he was, all that time, learning those secrets of the
human heart which he used to such effect in composing his sermons. He
had very suave and winning ways as confessor, though he enjoined great
strictness as preacher. This led a witty woman of his time to say of
him: "Father Bourdaloue charges high in the pulpit, but he sells cheap
in the confessional." How much laxity he allowed as confessor, it is, of
course, impossible to say. But his sermons remain to show that, though
indeed he was severe and high in requirement as preacher, he did not
fail to soften asperity by insisting on the goodness, while he insisted
on the awfulness, of God. Still, it cannot be denied, that somehow the
elaborate compliments which, as an established convention of his pulpit,
he not infrequently delivered to Louis XIV., tended powerfully to make
it appear that his stern denunciation of sin, which at first blush might
seem directly levelled at the king, had in reality no application at
all, or but the very gentlest application, to the particular case of his
Most Christian Majesty.

We begin our citations from Bourdaloue with an extract from a sermon of
his on "A Perverted Conscience