38 FRONTENAC AND PERROT. [1674. 



to and fro. Frontenac told him that his conduct 

 was wanting in respect to the council, and to the 

 governor as its head. Fenelon several times took 

 off his hat, and pushed it on again more angrily 

 than ever, saying at the same time that Frontenac 

 was wanting in respect to his character of priest, 

 in citing him before a civil tribunal. As he per- 

 sisted in his refusal to take the required attitude, 

 he was at length tolcl that he might leave the 

 room. After being kept for a time in the ante- 

 room in charge of a constable, he was again 

 brought before the council, when he still refused 

 obedience, and was ordered into a sort of honorable 

 imprisonment. 1 



This behavior of the effervescent abbe, which 

 Frontenac justly enough characterizes as unworthy 

 of his birth and his sacred office, was, nevertheless, 

 founded on a claim sustained by many precedents. 

 As an ecclesiastic, Fenelon insisted that the bishop 

 alone, and not the council, had the right to judge him. 

 Like Perrot, too, he challenged his judges as parties 

 to the suit, or otherwise interested against him. On 

 the question of jurisdiction, he had all the priests 

 on his side. Bishop Laval was in France ; and 

 Bernieres, his grand vicar, was far from filling the 

 place of the strenuous and determined prelate. 

 Yet the ecclesiastical storm rose so high that the 

 councillors, discouraged and daunted, were no 

 longer amenable to the will of Frontenac ; and it 

 was resolved at last to refer the whole matter to 



1 Conteste entre le Gouverneur et I' Abbe de Fenelon ; Jugements et Delibera- 

 tions du Conseil Supe'rieur, 21 Aout, 1674. 



