ccuracy we need not doubt
when we come upon this remarkable and often quoted passage in her first
letter: "I never thought... of my own wishes; it was always yours, you
know yourself, that my heart was bent upon satisfying. Although the name
of wife seems both more sacred and more enduring, I should have
preferred that of mistress, or even concubine... thinking that, the more
humble I made myself for your sake, the more right I should have to your
favor, and the less stain I should put upon the brilliancy of your
glory."

When their misfortunes came upon them and Abelard wanted her to enter
the cloister she obeyed without complaint; but the truth comes out at
the close of her first letter: "When you entered the service of God, I
followed, nay, I preceded you... You made me first take the veil and the
vows, you chained me to God before yourself. This mistrust, the only
lack of confidence in me you ever showed, filled me with grief and
shame, me, who would, God knows, have followed you or have gone before
you unhesitatingly into the very flames of hell! For my heart was no
longer with me but with you." In this letter are the only things that
even look like reproaches on her part; she complains of his not writing
to her, of his grudging her even the poor consolation of a letter, when
she had done all for him: "Only tell me, if you can, why, since the
retirement from the world which you yourself enjoined upon me, you have
neglected me. Tell me, I say, or I will say what I think, and what is on
everybody's lips. Ah! it was lust rather than love which attracted you
to me... and that is why, your desire once satisfied, all demonstrations
of affection ceased with the desire which inspired them." She implores
him, therefore, to write and silence these disquieting voices in her
heart.

There was no hypocrisy in Heloise; she never was resigned to her
seclusion in the convent, and never pretended to be. She wrote to
Abelard that she was continuing to live in the convent only to obey him,
"for it was not love of God, but your wish, your wish alone which cast
my youth into the midst of monastic austerities." From the very
monastery of which she was prioress she writes her burning letters. The
first is superscribed: _Domino suo, imo patri, conjugi suo, imo fratri;
ancilla sua, imo filia; ipsius uxor, imo soror; Abelardo Heloissa_: "To
her lord, nay, to her father; to her husband, nay, to her brother; his
servant, nay, his daughter;