which you carry. O
France! if you do not abandon such luxurious extravagance, you will
lose your courage and your country." Hugh Capet, who became king of
France in 987, fixed his residence at Paris, thus again constituting it
the capital of the kingdom, and his son and successor Robert, being a
strict devotee, built and repaired several churches which had been
greatly injured by the Normans, and Paris began in his reign to assume
an appearance of improvement, which continued until it received a check
from an ill-timed joke of Philippe the First, who made a satirical
remark upon William the Conqueror of England having become rather
unwieldy, which so provoked that choleric monarch that he laid waste a
great portion of Philippe's dominions; when his progress was checked by
his falling from his horse, which occasioned his death and thus
delivered Philippe from a most powerful enemy. In the following reign,
that of Lewis the Fat, learning began to make considerable progress, and
the colleges of Paris to acquire a high celebrity, and amongst the
professors whose reputation was of the highest, was Abelard, no one
before having succeeded in attracting so many pupils. In 1118 he
established a school in Paris, but from a variety of persecutions which
he endured, he was frequently obliged to retire to different parts of
France; his unfortunate attachment to Heloise is but too well known, and
she ultimately became the abbess of a convent which Abelard founded at
Nogent-sur-Seine, and which he called Paraclet. The number of pupils at
one time are stated to have been three thousand, and he instructed them
in the open air; it is also asserted that of his followers fifty became
either bishops or archbishops, twenty cardinals, and one pope, Celestin
II. In fact the fame of Abelard had arrived at such an altitude that he
was the means of giving a new era to Paris, which was designated the
city of letters; other professors became highly celebrated, and some
authors pretend that the immense concourse of students who ultimately
flocked to Paris, exceeded the number of the inhabitants, and there was
much difficulty in finding the means of lodging them; how great must
have been the anxiety for learning, as the masters were exceedingly
brutal and imparted their knowledge to the pupil by the force of blows,
which at length deterred many students from placing themselves under the
charge of such preceptors. This extraordinary desire for obtainin