his wife, nay, his sister; to Abelard,
Heloise." She seems to lack words to voice the passionate devotion of
her heart, and comes at the last to the best and simplest, a veritable
cry of the heart it is To Abelard, Heloise. Even in the letters
subsequent to Abelard's patient endeavor to allay the transports of
devotion to a mere man in one who had vowed her life to Christ, she does
not restrain her feelings entirely. She superscribes them: "To him who
is all for her after Christ, she who is all for him in Christ," and
finally, "To her sovereign master, his devoted slave." It is true that
the passion is more under control, but it is there nevertheless; for in
one of these letters she ever and anon addresses Abelard as "my greatest
blessing," and deliberately says: "Under all circumstances, God knows, I
have feared offending you more than I have feared offending Him; and it
is you far more than God whom I wish to please; it was a word from you,
no divine call, that made me take the veil." And she says, in reply to
Abelard's request to be buried in the cemetery of the Paraclete: "I
shall be more intent on following you without delay than upon providing
for your burial."

Bigotry or narrow piety, which are so much alike as to be scarcely
distinguishable, might find fault with the uncompromising frankness of
Heloise in confessing the persistence of love after she is a nun. She
admits that she loved Abelard passionately; moreover: "If I must indeed
lay bare all the weakness of my miserable heart, I do not find in my
heart contrition or penitence sufficient to appease God. I cannot
withhold myself from complaining of His pitiless cruelty in regard to
the outrage inflicted on you, and I only offend Him by rebellious
murmurings against His decrees, instead of seeking to allay His wrath by
repentance. Can it be said, in fact, that one is truly penitent,
whatever be the bodily penances submitted to, when the soul still
harbors the thought of sin and burns with the same passions as of old?"
She cannot bring herself to regret or even to forget and to cease to
long for the pleasures of their love. "They praise me for purity of
life; it is only because they do not know of my hypocrisy. The purity of
the flesh is set down to the credit of virtue; but true virtue is of the
soul, not of the body." These confessions, it strikes us, are proof of
the purity and loftiness of her ideals; she will not accept credit for
virtues that are only sk