gement and
consolation. He speaks of their mutual sufferings as providential; and
his letter is couched in a more Christian spirit than one would
naturally impute to him in view of his contests with the orthodox
leaders of the Church; and it also expresses more tenderness than can be
reconciled with the selfish man he is usually represented. He writes:--

"See, dearest, how with the strong nets of his mercy God has taken us
from the depths of a perilous sea. Observe how he has tempered mercy
with justice; compare our danger with the deliverance, our disease with
the remedy. I merit death, and God gives me life. Come, and join me in
proclaiming how much the Lord has done for us. Be my inseparable
companion in an act of grace, since you have participated with me in the
fault and the pardon. Take courage, my dear sister; whom the Lord loveth
he chastiseth. Sympathize with Him who suffered for your redemption.
Approach in spirit His sepulchre. Be thou His spouse."

Then he closes with this prayer:--

"When it pleased Thee, O Lord, and as it pleased Thee, Thou didst join
us, and Thou didst separate us. Now, what Thou hast so mercifully begun,
mercifully complete; and after separating us in this world, join us
together eternally in heaven."

No one can read this letter without acknowledging its delicacy and its
loftiness. All his desires centred in the spiritual good of her whom the
Church would not allow him to call any longer his wife, yet to whom he
hoped to be reunited in heaven. As a professed nun she could no longer,
with propriety, think of him as an earthly husband. For a priest to
acknowledge a nun for his wife would have been a great scandal. By all
the laws of the Church and the age they were now only brother and sister
in Christ. Nothing escaped from his pen which derogates from the
austere dignity of the priest.

But Heloise was more human and less conventional. She had not conquered
her love; once given, it could not be taken back. She accepted her
dreary immolation in the convent, since she obeyed Abelard both as
husband and as a spiritual father; but she would have left the convent
and rejoined him had he demanded it, for marriage was to her more sacred
than the veil. She was more emancipated from the ideas of her
superstitious age than even the bold and rationalistic philosopher. With
all her moral and spiritual elevation, Heloise could not conquer her
love. And, as a wedded wife, why should she conquer