th.

What path lay open to me thereafter? How could I ever again hold up
my head among men, when every finger should be pointed at me in
scorn, every tongue speak my blistering shame, and when I should be
a monstrous spectacle to all eyes? I was overwhelmed by the
remembrance that, according to the dread letter of the law, God
holds eunuchs in such abomination that men thus maimed are
forbidden to enter a church, even as the unclean and filthy; nay,
even beasts in such plight were not acceptable as sacrifices. Thus
in Leviticus (xxii, 24) is it said: "Ye shall not offer unto the
Lord that which hath its stones bruised, or crushed, or broken, or
cut." And in Deuteronomy (xxiii, 1), "He that is wounded in the
stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the
congregation of the Lord."

I must confess that in my misery it was the overwhelming sense of
my disgrace rather than any ardour for conversion to the religious
life that drove me to seek the seclusion of the monastic cloister.
Heloise had already, at my bidding, taken the veil and entered a
convent. Thus it was that we both put on the sacred garb, I in the
abbey of St. Denis, and she in the convent of Argenteuil, of which
I have already spoken. She, I remember well, when her fond friends
sought vainly to deter her from submitting her fresh youth to the
heavy and almost intolerable yoke of monastic life, sobbing and
weeping replied in the words of Cornelia:

"... O husband most noble,
Who ne'er shouldst have shared my couch! Has fortune such power
To smite so lofty a head? Why then was I wedded
Only to bring thee to woe? Receive now my sorrow,
The price I so gladly pay."
(Lucan, "Pharsalia," viii, 94.)

With these words on her lips did she go forthwith to the altar, and
lifted therefrom the veil, which had been blessed by the bishop,
and before them all she took the vows of the religious life. For my
part, scarcely had I recovered from my wound when clerics sought me
in great numbers, endlessly beseeching both my abbot and me myself
that now, since I was done with learning for the sake of gain or
renown, I should turn to it for the sole love of God. They bade me
care diligently for the talent which God had committed to my
keeping (Matthew, xxv, 15), since surely He would demand it back
from me with interest. It was their plea that, inasmuch as of old I
had laboured chiefly in behalf of the rich, I should now devo