to have brought the tears welling from the
eyes of the stern philosopher. Love and
pride and his good name among men lay all
a-bleeding. A hangman's brazier and a
hangman's office were all the rewards of long
years of patient study and research and soul-
engrossing meditation. The glory of the
schools, the master of masters, was reduced
to the level of a convicted libeller; lashed
like a hound, driven forth from among his
fellow men like a Leper or a Pariah.

Hunted about from place to place;
pursued by mandates, censures and decrees;
without shelter, without resources, almost
without bread, Abelard hid himself in a solitude
near Troyes. Here, in a barren and
desolate heath, he built with his own hands a
wretched hovel of mud and wattles. This
hovel was afterwards to become the Paraclete.

Unable to dig, ashamed to beg, yet
compelled to seek some means of subsistence,
Abelard commenced expounding the Scriptures
for his daily bread. He soon gathered
round him a considerable body of scholars.
Before long their number amounted to
upwards of three thousand! Some rays of his
ancient glories seemed to return to him.
From the fees he received from his scholars
he was enabled to build a chapel and convent,
which he dedicated to the Holy Trinity. But
his enemies were indefatigable. The dedication
was declared heretical; and, to appease
his adversaries, Abelard changed the name of
his convent to that of the Paraclete or
Consolation. When, at length, wearied with
continual disputes and vexations, Abelard
accepted the Abbacy of St. Gildas-des-Rhuys,
in the diocese of Vannes, he signified to
Heloïse his desire that she should take
possession of the Paraclete with her nuns. Her
learning and renown had already elevated
her to be the Abbess of the convent of
Argenteuil, in which Abelard had placed her;
but Suger, the Abbot of St. Denis, had laid a
claim against the lands and buildings attached
to it; and she accordingly availed herself of
the asylum provided for her by Abelard.

Abelard was not happy in his new position.
He found himself in a barbarous
district. His convent was rudely built and
scantily furnished. His monks were dissolute
and insubordinate. When he endeavoured
to rebuke their excesses, and to reform
their way of life, he was met with taunts of
the scandals of his past life. Yet here he
remained during many years; and here he
composed the pathetic poems called the Odæ
Flebiles—the Songs of Weeping; in which,
under a thin vein of biblical fiction, he poured
forth his own unutterable woes. Here he
received, after the silence of years, those
impassioned letters from Heloïse, which will be
read and wept over in all time. He replied
to her; but in a stiff, constrained and frigid
tone. The man's heart was dead within him.
His misery was so immense that the selfishness
of his grief can be pardoned. To the
expressions of endearment, the written
caresses that reached o'er hundreds of leagues,
he could only return philosophic injunctions
to resignation, and devout maxims and
discourses. He was her "best beloved," her
"life." She was his "dear sister in the Lord."
He took considerable interest in the prosperity
of the Paraclete. He framed a rule of
discipline for the guidance of the sisterhood;
he even visited the Paraclete. After several
years, Abelard saw Heloïse again. He was
no longer Abelard; but the abbot of St.
Gildas: she no longer Heloïse, but the abbess
of the Paraclete. There were visitations,
benedictions, and sermons; and so they
met and so they parted.

His enemies again renewed their attacks
—his heresies were again brought against
him. A great ecclesiastical council was held
at Sens, before which Abelard was summoned.
There, his principal adversary was the abbot
of Clairvaux, the great St. Bernard. He was
held up to execration as an abbot without
monks, without morals, without faith; as a
married friar; as the hero of a disgraceful
amour. Saint Bernard compared him to
Arius—to Nestorius—to Pelagius. He was
fully condemned. His life was threatened.
He appealed to Rome. "Shall he who
denies Peter's faith take refuge behind Peter's
chair?" exclaimed St. Bernard. His appeal
was at length ungraciously allowed, and he
set out for Rome. But on his way thither,
"weary and old of service," he was
induced to accept the asylum offered him
by Peter the Venerable in the monastery
of Cluny. There, in prayer and mortification,
he passed the brief remaining time
he had yet to live. And in the priory
of St. Marcel—an establishment dependent
upon the monastery of Cluny—Peter
Abelard died in the year eleven hundred and
forty-two, being then sixty-three years old.
Heloïse survived him twenty-one years.
Their son, Astrolabius, survived his father,
but not his mother. He died a monk.

The remains of Abelard were, in the first
instance, interred at St. Marcel. They were
reclaimed by Heloïse; and the reclamation
having been allowed by Peter the Venerable,
the corpse was removed to the Paraclete,
where it was buried. The tradition runs,
that when Heloïse died, her body was
deposited in the same tomb; and that, as
the corpse was lowered into the vault, the
skeleton of the dead Abelard opened its
arms to receive her. The truth, however, is
that they were not at first buried together.
It was not till fourteen hundred and ninety-
seven that Catherine de Courcelles,
seventeenth abbess of the Paraclete, caused their
remains to be placed in one coffin. This
double coffin was discovered and exhumed at
the French Revolution; and the popular fury
which destroyed the convent of the Paraclete
respected the bones of Abelard and Heloïse.
After many changes of domicile, the bones