let regard for
your reputation temper your shamelessness. Remember that Socrates
was chained to a wife, and by what a filthy accident he himself
paid for this blot on philosophy, in order that others thereafter
might be made more cautious by his example. Jerome thus mentions
this affair, writing about Socrates in his first book against
Jovinianus: "Once when he was withstanding a storm of reproaches
which Xantippe was hurling at him from an upper story, he was
suddenly drenched with foul slops; wiping his head, he said only,
'I knew there would be a shower after all that thunder.'"

Her final argument was that it would be dangerous for me to take
her back to Paris, and that it would be far sweeter for her to be
called my mistress than to be known as my wife; nay, too, that
this would be more honourable for me as well. In such case, she
said, love alone would hold me to her, and the strength of the
marriage chain would not constrain us. Even if we should by chance
be parted from time to time, the joy of our meetings would be all
the sweeter by reason of its rarity. But when she found that she
could not convince me or dissuade me from my folly by these and
like arguments, and because she could not bear to offend me, with
grievous sighs and tears she made an end of her resistance, saying:
"Then there is no more left but this, that in our doom the sorrow
yet to come shall be no less than the love we two have already
known." Nor in this, as now the whole world knows, did she lack the
spirit of prophecy.

So, after our little son was born, we left him in my sister's care,
and secretly returned to Paris. A few days later, in the early
morning, having kept our nocturnal vigil of prayer unknown to all
in a certain church, we were united there in the benediction of
wedlock, her uncle and a few friends of his and mine being present.
We departed forthwith stealthily and by separate ways, nor
thereafter did we see each other save rarely and in private, thus
striving our utmost to conceal what we had done. But her uncle and
those of his household, seeking solace for their disgrace, began to
divulge the story of our marriage, and thereby to violate the
pledge they had given me on this point. Heloise, on the contrary,
denounced her own kin and swore that they were speaking the most
absolute lies. Her uncle, aroused to fury thereby, visited her
repeatedly with punishments. No sooner had I learned this than I
sent her to a convent of