His hospitality had been outraged
and his niece dishonored. He insisted that the pair should at once
be married. Here was revealed a certain weakness in the character of
Abelard. He consented to the marriage, but insisted that it should be
kept an utter secret.

Oddly enough, it was Heloise herself who objected to becoming the wife
of the man she loved. Unselfishness could go no farther. She saw that,
were he to marry her, his advancement in the Church would be almost
impossible; for, while the very minor clergy sometimes married in spite
of the papal bulls, matrimony was becoming a fatal bar to ecclesiastical
promotion. And so Heloise pleaded pitifully, both with her uncle and
with Abelard, that there should be no marriage. She would rather bear
all manner of disgrace than stand in the way of Abelard's advancement.

He has himself given some of the words in which she pleaded with him:

What glory shall I win from you, when I have made you quite inglorious
and have humbled both of us? What vengeance will the world inflict on
me if I deprive it of one so brilliant? What curses will follow such a
marriage? How outrageous would it be that you, whom nature created for
the universal good, should be devoted to one woman and plunged into such
disgrace? I loathe the thought of a marriage which would humiliate you.

Indeed, every possible effort which another woman in her place would
employ to make him marry her she used in order to dissuade him. Finally,
her sweet face streaming with tears, she uttered that tremendous
sentence which makes one really think that she loved him as no other
woman ever loved a man. She cried out, in an agony of self-sacrifice:

"I would rather be your mistress than the wife even of an emperor!"

Nevertheless, the two were married, and Abelard returned to his
lecture-room and to his studies. For months they met but seldom.
Meanwhile, however, the taunts and innuendos directed against Heloise
so irritated Fulbert that he broke his promise of secrecy, and told his
friends that Abelard and Heloise were man and wife. They went to Heloise
for confirmation. Once more she showed in an extraordinary way the depth
of her devotion.

"I am no wife," she said. "It is not true that Abelard has married me.
My uncle merely tells you this to save my reputation."

They asked her whether she would swear to this; and, without a moment's
hesitation, this pure and noble woman took an oath upon the Scriptures
that