But Abélard prevailed. ‘Weeping and sobbing vehemently,’ he says, ‘she brought her discourse to an end with these words: “One thing alone remains for us now, we must exhibit in our common ruin a grief as strong as the love that has gone before.”’ It is an artistic termination to Abélard’s discourse, at all events.
Back to Paris once more, therefore, the two proceeded. Heloise had a strong foreboding of evil to come from the side of Fulbert; she did not trust his profession of conciliation. However, she left her boy, whom, with a curious affectation, they had called Astrolabe (the name of an astronomic apparatus), in the charge of Abélard’s sister Denyse. They were married a few days after their arrival at Paris. The vigil was spent, according to custom, in one of the churches: they remained all night in prayer, and the ceremony took place after an early Mass in the morning. Their arrival in Paris had been kept secret, and only Fulbert and a few friends of both parties were present at the marriage. Then they parted at the altar: the man weakly proceeding to follow his poor ambition in the school, the noble young wife making herself a sad sacrifice to his selfishness and irresolution.
During the next few dreary months they saw each other rarely and in secret. Abélard was a man of the type that waits for the compulsion of events in a serious conflict of desires, or of desire and duty. He could not lay aside his day-dream that somehow and some day the fates would smooth out a path along which he could carry both his whole ambition and his love. Events did decide for him once more. Fulbert, it seems, broke his faith with Abélard and divulged the marriage. But when people came to Heloise for confirmation, she did more than ‘lie with the sweetness of a Madonna,’ in Charles Reade’s approving phrase; she denied on oath that she was the wife of Abélard. Fulbert then began to ill-treat her (the circumstance may be commended to the notice of those historians who think he had acted from pure affection), and Abélard removed her secretly from her uncle’s house.
It was to the convent at Argenteuil that Abélard conveyed his wife this time. One passes almost the very spot in entering modern Paris by the western line, but the village lay at a much greater distance from the ancient island-city, a few miles beyond St. Denis, going down the river. It was a convent of Benedictine nuns, very familiar to Heloise, who had received her early education there. In order to conceal Heloise more effectually, he bade her put on the habit of the nuns, with the exception of the veil, which was the distinguishing mark of the professed religious. Here she remained for some months; Abélard waiting upon events, as usual, and occasionally making a secret visit to Argenteuil. According to Turlot, the abbess of Argenteuil was the mother of Heloise. We know, at least, that the nunnery was in a very lax condition, and that, beyond her unconquerable presentiment of evil, Heloise would suffer little restraint. Indeed, Abélard reminds her later, in his second letter to her, that their conjugal relations continued whilst she was in the nunnery.
How long this wretched situation continued it is impossible to determine. It cannot have been many months, at the most, before Fulbert discovered what had happened; it was probably a matter of weeks. Yet this is the only period in which it is possible to entertain the theory of Abélard’s licentiousness. We have already seen that Cotter Morison’s notion of a licentious period before the liaison with Heloise is quite indefensible. The tragic event which we have presently to relate puts the latest term to the possibility of such licence. Now, there are two documents on which Abélard’s critics rely: a letter to him from Fulques, prior in the monastery of Deuil near Paris, and a letter from his former teacher, Master Roscelin. Prior Fulques, however, merely says he ‘has heard’ that Abélard was reduced to poverty through ‘the greed and avarice of harlots’; and Roscelin explicitly states that he heard his story from the monks of St. Denis. Indeed, we may at once exclude Roscelin’s letter; not merely because it was written in a most furious outburst of temper, when a man would grasp any rumour, but also on the ground that his story is absurd and impossible. He represents Abélard, when a monk at St. Denis, later, returning to his monastery with the money earned by his teaching, and marching off with it to pay a former mistress. We shall see, in a later chapter, that Abélard did not begin to teach until he had left St. Denis.
If, however, Roscelin’s story is too absurd to entertain in itself, it is useful in casting some light on Fulques’s letter. Fulques was writing to Abélard on behalf of the monks of St. Denis. He would be well acquainted with their gossip, and would, therefore, probably be referring to the story which Roscelin shows to be impossible in giving it more fully. It is not unlikely that the story was really a perverse account of Abélard’s visits to Heloise at Argenteuil. In any case we are reduced to the gossip of a band of monks of notorious character (teste St. Bernard), of indirect and uncertain information, and of bitter hostility to Abélard.
And this is all the evidence which can be found in support of the calumny. On the strength of this monkish gossip we are asked to believe that Abélard grossly deceived his young wife, and made an attempt, as ridiculous (if the rumour contained truth) as it was hypocritical, to deceive the readers of his heart-naked confession. We are to suppose that ‘the abhorrence of harlots,’ of which he spoke earlier, entirely disappeared when he found himself united by the sacred bonds of both religion and love to a noble and devoted wife. We are to suppose that his apparent detestation and condemnation of his past conduct was a mere rhetorical artifice to conceal the foulest and most extraordinary episode in his career from the people amongst whom he had lived—an artifice, moreover, which would be utterly inconsistent with his life and character at the time he wrote the ‘Story.’ It is almost impossible to take such a notion seriously.
Once more, then, we are in a period of waiting for the direction of events. It came this time in tragic accents that for ever cured the unfortunate Breton of his listless trust in fate.
Fulbert learned at length that Heloise had been sent to Argenteuil, and had taken the habit. The canon at once inferred that this was a preliminary step to a dissolution of the marriage. He would be unaware that it had been consummated, and would suppose that Abélard intended to apply to Rome for a dispensation to relieve him of an apparent embarrassment. He decided on a fearful revenge, which should at least prevent Abélard from marrying another.
And one early morning, a little later, Paris was in a frenzy of excitement. Canons, students, and citizens, thronged the streets, and pressed towards Abélard’s house on St. Genevieve. ‘Almost the entire city,’ says Fulques, went clamouring towards his house: ‘women wept as though each one had lost her husband.’ Abélard had been brutally mutilated during the night. Hirelings of Canon Fulbert had corrupted his valet, and entered his room whilst he slept. They had perpetrated an indescribable outrage, such as was not infrequently inflicted in the quarrels of the Patareni and the Nicolaitæ. In that dark night the sunshine disappeared for ever from the life of Pierre Abélard. Henceforth we have to deal with a new man.