herself and her lover. Devoted and unselfish was her love; undoubtedly Heloïse would have sacrificed herself for Abaelard under any social conditions. Nevertheless, with her, marriage added little to love; it was a mere formal and binding authorization; love was no purer for it. To her mind, for a man in Abaelard's situation to be entangled in a temporary amour was better than to be chained to his passion, with his career irrevocably ruined, in marriage. In so far as her thoughts or Abaelard's were influenced by the environment of priestly thinking, marriage would seem a rendering permanent of a passionate and sinful state, which it were best to cast off altogether. For herself, as she said truly, the marriage would bring obloquy rather than reinstatement. She had been mistress to a clerk; marriage would make her the partner of his abandonment of his vocation, the accomplice of broken purposes if not of broken vows. And finally, as there was then no line of disgrace as now between bastard and lawful issue, Heloïse had no thought that the interests of her son demanded that his mother should become his father's wife.
"Leaving our son in my sister's care, we stole back to Paris, and shortly after, having in the night celebrated our vigils in a certain church, we were married at dawn in the presence of her uncle and some of his and our friends. We left at once separately and with secrecy, and afterwards saw each other only in privacy, so as to conceal what we had done. But her uncle and his household began at once to announce the marriage and violate his word; while she, on the contrary, protested vehemently and swore that it was false. At that he became enraged and treated her vilely. When I discovered this I sent her to the convent of Argenteuil, near Paris, where she had been educated. There I had her take the garb of a nun, except the veil. Hearing this, the uncle and his relations thought that I had duped them, ridding myself of Heloïse by making her a nun. So having bribed my servant, they came upon me by night, when I was sleeping, and took on me a vengeance as cruel and irretrievable as it was vile and shameful. Two of the perpetrators were pursued and vengeance taken.
"In the morning the whole town was assembled, crying and lamenting my plight, especially the clerks and students; at which I was afflicted with more shame than I suffered physical pain. I thought of my ruined hopes and glory, and then saw that by God's
just judgment I was punished where I had most sinned, and that