Heloise entered a convent and gave good-bye to the world and its

pleasures for all time. For twelve years she never heard of Abelard

-never even heard his name mentioned. She had become prioress of

Argenteuil and led a life of complete seclusion. She happened one day to

see a letter written by him, in which he narrated his own history. She

cried over it and wrote him. He answered, addressing her as his "sister

in Christ." They continued to correspond, she in the unweighed language

of unwavering affection, he in the chilly phraseology of the polished

rhetorician. She poured out her heart in passionate, disjointed

sentences; he replied with finished essays, divided deliberately into

heads and sub-heads, premises and argument. She showered upon him the

tenderest epithets that love could devise, he addressed her from the

North Pole of his frozen heart as the "Spouse of Christ!" The abandoned

villain!

On account of her too easy government of her nuns, some disreputable

irregularities were discovered among them, and the Abbot of St. Denis

broke up her establishment. Abelard was the official head of the

monastery of St. Gildas de Ruys, at that time, and when he heard of her

homeless condition a sentiment of pity was aroused in his breast (it is a

wonder the unfamiliar emotion did not blow his head off,) and he placed

her and her troop in the little oratory of the Paraclete, a religious

establishment which he had founded. She had many privations and

sufferings to undergo at first, but her worth and her gentle disposition

won influential friends for her, and she built up a wealthy and

flourishing nunnery. She became a great favorite with the heads of the

164

The Innocents Abroad