ia: "O my husband, greatest of men! worthy
of a bride far better than I! Had Fate such power over a head so
illustrious? Wretch that I am, why did I wed thee only to bring woe upon
thee? Be thou now avenged in the sacrifice I so willingly make for
thee!"--(Lucan, Pharsalia, VIII., 1. 94.) The convent was to her a
punishment; but as she goes to it she does not think of her punishment,
but only of his.

Let us leave Heloise for the present and pursue the story of Abelard.
His troubles were just beginning; henceforth almost everything seemed to
go wrong with him. Scarcely recovered from his injuries, he was besought
by his former pupils to resume his lectures, while the monks of
Saint-Denis, thinking to gain credit through their illustrious recruit,
also urged him to teach again. These same monks Abelard had found far
from congenial. They were covetous, narrow-minded, and outrageously
licentious. He was, therefore, the more willing to undertake his old
work, and opened a modest school at the little village of Maisoncelle,
in Brie, where the monks of Saint-Denis had a priory. Here, once more,
crowds came to hear him, and he felt so encouraged that he ventured to
put in book form some of his theological and philosophical opinions, at
the instance and for the use of his students. Neither misfortune nor the
wish of Job that his adversary had written a book had taught him
caution; in his book, probably the _Introductio ad Theologiam_ that has
come down to us, he ventured to discuss even the most obscure and
jealously guarded mysteries of the faith, and to discuss them with the
same lucidity, directness, and acuteness of reason that had made him
famous as a lecturer. He was, indeed, in the habit of acting upon one of
the phrases which one may cull from his writings as characteristic of
the man's mental attitude: "Understand, that you may believe." Abelard
found, like hundreds of others who have proceeded in this way, that his
reason could not account, to its own satisfaction, for all the things
called of faith. He was constantly allowing himself to be led on in
discussion until he found himself confronted with a dilemma: either to
follow logic still further and end in infidelity, or to silence, as best
he could, the voice of reason by an appeal to authority and to faith. On
the present occasion it was an utterance on the dogma of the Trinity
that his enemies seized upon. The leaders of the persecution were two
former classmates,