of success which had
already been achieved. The leaven of a true Christianity was working in
the half-pagan populations. It had not yet completely reached the
nobles and the knights, or even all the ecclesiastics who served it and
who were consecrated to its mission. Thus, amid a sort of political
chaos were seen the glaring evils of feudalism. Kings and princes and
their followers lived the lives of swine. Private blood-feuds were
regarded lightly. There was as yet no single central power. Every man
carried his life in his hand, trusting to sword and dagger for
protection.

The cities were still mere hamlets clustered around great castles or
fortified cathedrals. In Paris itself the network of dark lanes, ill
lighted and unguarded, was the scene of midnight murder and
assassination. In the winter-time wolves infested the town by night.
Men-at-arms, with torches and spears, often had to march out from their
barracks to assail the snarling, yelping packs of savage animals that
hunger drove from the surrounding forests.

Paris of the twelfth century was typical of France itself, which was
harried by human wolves intent on rapine and wanton plunder. There were
great schools of theology, but the students who attended them fought
and slashed one another. If a man's life was threatened he must protect
it by his own strength or by gathering about him a band of friends. No
one was safe. No one was tolerant. Very few were free from the grosser
vices. Even in some of the religious houses the brothers would meet at
night for unseemly revels, splashing the stone floors with wine and
shrieking in a delirium of drunkenness. The rules of the Church
enjoined temperance, continence, and celibacy; but the decrees of Leo
IX. and Nicholas II. and Alexander II. and Gregory were only partially
observed.

In fact, Europe was in a state of chaos--political and moral and
social. Only very slowly was order emerging from sheer anarchy. We must
remember this when we recall some facts which meet us in the story of
Abelard and Heloise.

The jealousy of Champeaux drove Abelard for a time from Paris. He
taught and lectured at several other centers of learning, always
admired, and yet at the same time denounced by many for his advocacy of
reason as against blind faith. During the years of his wandering he
came to have a wide knowledge of the world and of human nature. If we
try to imagine him as he was in his thirty-fifth year we shall find in
hi