ly
unenlightened but devout age produced a Heloise, the impersonation of
sympathy, disinterestedness, suffering, forgiveness, and resignation. I
have already described this dark, sad, turbulent, superstitious,
ignorant period of strife and suffering, yet not without its poetic
charms and religious aspirations; when the convent and the castle were
its chief external features, and when a life of meditation was as marked
as a life of bodily activity, as if old age and youth were battling for
supremacy,--a very peculiar state of society, in which we see the
loftiest speculations of the intellect and the highest triumphs of faith
blended with puerile enterprises and misdirected physical forces.

In this semi-barbaric age Heloise was born, about the year 1101. Nobody
knew who was her father, although it was surmised that he belonged to
the illustrious family of the Montmorencies, which traced an unbroken
lineage to Pharimond, before the time of Clovis. She lived with her
uncle Fulbert, an ignorant, worldly-wise old canon of the Cathedral
Church of Notre Dame in Paris. He called her his niece; but whether
niece, or daughter, or adopted child, was a mystery. She was of
extraordinary beauty, though remarkable for expression rather than for
regularity of feature. In intellect she was precocious and brilliant;
but the qualities of a great soul shone above the radiance of her wit.
She was bright, amiable, affectionate, and sympathetic,--the type of an
interesting woman. The ecclesiastic was justly proud of her, and gave to
her all the education the age afforded. Although not meaning to be a
nun, she was educated in a neighboring convent,--for convents, even in
those times, were female seminaries, containing many inmates who never
intended to take the veil. But the convent then, as since, was a living
grave to all who took its vows, and was hated by brilliant women who
were not religious. The convent necessarily and logically, according to
the theology of the Middle Ages, was a retreat from the world,--a cell
of expiation; and yet it was the only place where a woman could
be educated.

Heloise, it would seem, made extraordinary attainments, and spoke Latin
as well as her native tongue. She won universal admiration, and in due
time, at the age of eighteen, returned to her uncle's house, on the
banks of the Seine, on the island called the Cite, where the majestic
cathedral and the castle of the king towered above the rude houses of