tery."

It is pleasant to read his letters, after one has become convinced that
the man really loved Heloise; then, one finds in them gentleness and
consideration for her feelings. With patience and adroitness, he answers
the questions she asks, distracts her thoughts, still too much intent on
him, and works out for her an elaborate scheme of government for use in
the Paraclete; and one can understand that this, if anything, would have
been a consolation to Heloise, to feel that the whole tenor of her life
was regulated by the affectionate legislation of the man whom she had
loved.

About the love of Heloise we need not hesitate. "Truly, she did love
him," says the old chronicler of Saint Martin de Tours, and the ages
since have been but echoing this. We must try, however, to form some
more definite idea of the personality of one who is perhaps the greatest
figure in an actual romance that the world has known. Of her beauty
there can be no question; but we neither know nor very greatly care
whether she was tall and dark or slender and fair. Probably we should be
safe in assuming, on general principles, that she was a blonde, since
the predilection for that style of beauty was so strong that Saint
Bernard devotes a whole sermon to proving that there is no contradiction
in the statement in the Song of Songs: "I am black, but comely." The
most remarkable thing about her was her learning. Even when Abelard
first met her, she was "most distinguished for the extent of her
learning,"... "in great renown throughout the kingdom" for her
proficiency. Her knowledge included not only Latin, but Greek and even
Hebrew, both rarely understood even among men in a day when men usually
got all and women none of the education that could be had. Her monastery
at the Paraclete became a school as famous in its way as Abelard had
made Paris.

Of another trait in her character, too, we can speak with certainty.
Together with her learning went firmness of judgment and perfect sanity,
the elements which go to make up what we vaguely call character. We have
seen Abelard expressing his confidence in her wisdom and judgment. Saint
Bernard, the bitter enemy of Abelard, could not withhold his admiration
from her, although she herself, a faithful partisan of her husband,
always spoke of Saint Bernard as "the false Apostle." The latter, as was
natural in a man renowned for intellect and for asceticism, was more
struck by the grandeur of her characte