r than moved by her personal
charms, and he wrote a letter to the Pope, commending her as a prioress,
in a tone of lofty esteem rather than sympathy. Her own conduct, we have
remarked, was above reproach, and her convent was so well governed that
its rule became the standard for all the convents of her day. Whatever
may have been the violence of her grief over the separation from
Abelard, she was too proud to expose her feelings to the world. She
lived on bravely, honorably, respected by high and low, yet making no
secret of the fact that she had loved and still did love Abelard. One
does not wonder that she won the popular fame which has kept her name
alive, and which has fixed the epithet applied by Villon some three
centuries later: _La tres-sage Heloise_. In all the happy phrases of the
_Ballade des Belles Dames du Temps Jadis_ there is no juster epithet.

In striking contrast to the brutal selfishness of Abelard is the noble
disinterestedness and complete effacement of self seen in the conduct of
Heloise. Realizing that with him success in his vocation is everything
and love but an episode, she is content. More than this, she does
everything in her power to make him sacrifice her for the sake of the
career which she knows he is bent upon. She flatters him, feeds his
vanity, already overgreat, and consistently keeps out of view her own
woman's feelings. When Abelard, with what he considers unusual and
exemplary generosity, offers to marry her--one can fancy that he was not
very urgent--this is part of the argument she uses to dissuade him: "She
asked," says Abelard, "what atonement would not the world have a right
to require of her should she deprive it of such a light? What curses she
would call upon her head! What a loss this marriage would be to the
Church! What tears it would cost philosophy! Would it not be an unseemly
and deplorable thing to see a man whom nature had created for the whole
world made the slave of one woman?... The marriage would be a shame and
a burden to me... What agreement could there be between the labor of the
school and the cares of a house, between the desk and the cradle?... Is
there a man who, devoted to the meditations of philosophy or to the
study of the Scriptures, could endure the cries of a child, the singing
of the nurse as she put it to sleep, the continual coming and going of
the servants, the incessant worries of young children?"

That Abelard has reported her arguments with a