sanity and disorder, woman, indifferent as always to
texts, had found a form of love which, however impossible, was one that in
its innocence obscured the stupidities and turpitudes of the day. Then,
after the substitution of the Rosa mystica for the mystic lily,
tentatively there began an affranchisement of communes, of women and of
thought.

Hitherto it had been blasphemy to think. The first human voice that the
Middle Ages heard, the first, voice distinguishable from that of kings,
of felons and of beasts, was Abailard's. Whatever previously had been said
was bellowed or stuttered. It was with the forgotten elegance of Athens
that Abailard spoke, preaching as he did so the indulgence of God, the
rehabilitation of the flesh, the inferiority of fear, love's superiority.

Abailard, fascinating and gifted, was familiar with Greek and Hebrew,
attainments then prodigious to which he added other abilities, the art of
calming men while disturbing women--among others a young Parisian,
Heloise, herself a miracle of erudition and of beauty.

Abailard at the time was nearly thirty-eight, Heloise not quite eighteen.
Between them a liaison ensued that resulted in a secret marriage which
Abailard afterward disavowed and which, for his sake, Heloise denied. It
ruined their lives and founded their fame. Had it been less catastrophic
no word or memory of them could have endured. Misfortune made immortal
these lovers, one of whom took the veil and the other the cowl and whose
story has survived that of kingdoms.

In separation they corresponded. The letters of Heloise are vibrant still.
Only Sappho, in her lost songs to Phaon, could have exceeded their fervor.
"God knows," she wrote, "in you I sought but you, nothing but you. You
were my one and only object, marriage I did not seek, nor my way but
yours uniquely. If the title of wife be holy, I thought the name of
mistress more dear. Rather would I have been called that by you than
empress by an emperor."

Abailard's frigid and methodical answers were headed "To the bride of
Christ," or else "To my sister in Christ, from Abailard, her brother." The
tone of Heloise's replies was very different. "To my master, no; to my
brother, no; to my husband, no; his sister, his bride, no; from Heloise to
Abailard." Again she wrote: "At every angle of life God knows I fear to
offend you more than Him, I desire to please Him less than I do you. It
was your will not His that brought me where I am.