with my love."

All through the man's career one finds the same exaggerated self-esteem,
the same preoccupation with his own selfish interests. He positively
chuckles over the perfect success of his ruse to deceive Fulbert.
"Fulbert was fond of his money. Add to this the fact that he was eager
to procure for his niece all possible advantages in belles-lettres. By
flattering these two passions, I easily won his consent, and obtained
what I desired.... He urged me to devote to her education all of my
spare time, by day as well as by night, and not to fear to punish her
should I find her at fault. I wondered at his naivete!... Entrusting her
to me not only for instruction but for chastisement, what was this but
allowing full licence to my desires and furnishing me, even against my
will, with the opportunity of conquering by blows and threats if
caresses should be unavailing?" When he has ruined this niece, of whom
Fulbert was so proud, a moment of apparent remorse comes to him as he
witnesses the old man's distress: "I promised him any reparation which
it might please him to demand; I protested that what I had done would
surprise no one who had ever felt the violence of love and who knew into
what abysses women had, since the very beginning of the world, plunged
the greatest men. To appease him still further, I offered him a sort of
atonement _far greater than anything he could have hoped: I proposed to
marry her whom I had seduced, on condition only that the marriage be
kept secret, so as not to injure my reputation._" The italics are ours;
they can but faintly indicate our astonishment at the impudence no less
than the selfishness of this piece of condescension. This passage is
followed by four pages devoted to pedantic arguments, enforced by appeal
to historic cases, seeking to prove how prejudicial a thing marriage is
to holy men, to wise men, to great men, and that therefore it must be so
to Abelard. All this argument he ascribes to Heloise, who implored him
not to marry her; but the tone is his own; there is never a thought of
what it may mean for her, only for himself. In the same way, after
Fulbert has taken vengeance on him, in two pages of lamentations over
his fate there is not one word of pity for the grief of the woman who
had given all to him. It is: How shall I appear in public? What a wreck
I have made of my life! Not once: How shall I care for Heloise? What
amends can I make her for the wreck of her young l