Some day, then, after his ‘Story’ had gone forth on its peaceful mission into France, Abélard received a folded parchment in the once familiar hand.
‘To her lord, yea father: to her spouse, yea brother: from his servant, yea daughter—his wife, his sister: to Abélard from Heloise.’
So ran the superscription, a curious effort to breathe life into a formality of the day. Chance has brought to their abbey, she says, a copy of the letter he has recently sent forth. The story of his saddened life and of the dangers that yet multiply about him has affected them so deeply that they are filled with anxiety for him. ‘In hourly anguish do our trembling hearts and heaving breasts await the dread rumour of thy death. By Him who still extends to thee an uncertain protection we implore thee to inform us, His servants and thine, by frequent letter, of the course of the storms in which thou art still tossed; so that thou mayst let us at least, who have remained true to thee, share thy sorrow or thy joy. And if the storm shall have abated somewhat, so much the more speedily do thou send us an epistle which will bring so much joy to us.’ She invokes the authority of Seneca on the epistolary duties of friends, and she has a holier claim than that of friend, a stronger one than that of wife. ‘At thy command I would change, not merely my costume, but my very soul, so entirely art thou the sole possessor of my body and my spirit. Never, God is my witness, never have I sought anything in thee but thyself: I have sought thee, not thy gifts. I have not looked to the marriage bond or dowry: I have not even yearned to satisfy my own will and pleasure, but thine, as thou well knowest. The name of wife may be the holier and more approved, but the name of friend—nay, mistress or concubine, if thou wilt suffer it—has always been the sweeter to me. For in thus humbling myself for thee, I should win greater favour from thee, and do less injury to thy greatness. This thou hast thyself not wholly forgotten, in the aforesaid letter thou hast written for the consolation of a friend. Therein also thou hast related some of the arguments with which I essayed to turn thee from the thought of our unhappy wedlock, though thou hast omitted many in which I set forth the advantage of love over matrimony, freedom over bondage. God is my witness that if Augustus, the emperor of the whole world, were to honour me with the thought of wedlock, and yield me the empire of the universe, I should deem it more precious and more honourable to be thy mistress than to be the queen of a Cæsar.’
She claims no merit for her devotion. Abélard’s greatness more than justifies her seeming extravagance. ‘Who,’ she asks, going back to his golden age, ‘who did not hasten forth to look as thou didst walk abroad, or did not follow thee with outstretched neck and staring eyes? What wife, what maid, did not yearn for thee? What queen or noble dame was there who did not envy my fortune?’
Yet she would ask this measure of gratitude from him, that he write to her at times. He had never known refusal from her. ‘It was not religious fervour that drew me to the rigour of the conventual life, but thy command. How fruitlessly have I obeyed, if this gives me no title to thy gratitude!... When thou didst hasten to dedicate thyself to God I followed thee—nay, I went before thee. For, as if mindful of the looking back of Lot’s wife, thou didst devote me to God before thyself, by the sacred habit and vows of the monastery. Indeed it was in this sole circumstance that I had the sorrow and the shame of noting thy lack of confidence in me. God knows that I should not have hesitated a moment to go before or to follow thee to the very gates of hell, hadst thou commanded it. My soul was not my own but thine.’
Let him, therefore, make this small return of a letter to relieve her anxiety. ‘In earlier days, when thou didst seek worldly pleasure with me, thy letters were frequent enough; thy songs put the name of Heloise on every lip. Every street, every house in the city, echoed with my name. How juster would it be to lead me now to God than thou then didst to pleasure! Think then, I beseech thee, how much thou owest me. With this brief conclusion I terminate my long letter. Farewell, beloved.’
It is small wonder that the epistle placed Abélard in some perplexity. True, the devoted Heloise had spoken throughout in the past tense. But the ardour and the violence of her phrases betrayed a present depth of emotion which he must regard with some dismay. He had trusted that time and discipline would subdue the flame he had enkindled, and here it was indirectly revealed to live still in wondrous strength. He could not refuse to write, nor indeed would such a neglect profit anything; but he would send her a long letter of spiritual direction, and endeavour to divert her meditations.
‘To Heloise, his sister in Christ, from Abélard, her brother in Him,’ was the characteristic opening of his reply. If he has not written to her since her conversion, he says, it is not from neglect nor want of affection, but from the thought that she needed neither counsel nor consolation. She had been prioress at Argenteuil, the consoler and instructor of others. Yet, ‘if it seems otherwise to thy humility,’ he will certainly write her on any point she may suggest. She has spoken of prayer, and so he diverges into a long dissertation on the excellence of prayer, which fills nearly the whole of his pages. On one or two occasions only does he approach that colloquy of soul to soul, for which Heloise yearned so ardently. ‘We ourselves are united not only by the sanctity of our oath, but also by the identity of our religious profession. I will pass over your holy community, in which the prayers of so many virgins and widows ever mount up to God, and speak of thee thyself, whose holiness hath much favour with God, I doubt not, and remind thee what thou owest me, particularly in this grievous peril of mine. Do thou remember, then, in thy prayers him who is so specially thine own.’ And when at length he nears the end of his edifying treatise, he once more bares the heart that still beats within him. If, he says, they hear before long that he has fallen a victim to the plots of his enemies, or has by some other chance laid down his burden of sorrow, he trusts they will have his body brought to rest in their home, his own dear Paraclete, ‘for there is no safer and more blessed spot for the rest of a sorrowing soul.’
The long letter is, on the whole, prudent and formal to a degree. Yet it is not true that Abélard had nothing but coldness and prudence to return to his wife’s devotion. It is quite obvious what Abélard would conceive to be his duty in replying to Heloise. For her sake and for his, for her happiness and his repute, he must moderate the threatening fire. But that he had a true affection and sympathy for her is made clear by the occasional failure of his pious resolution. ‘Sister, who wert once dear to me in the world and art now most dear in Christ,’ he once exclaims parenthetically; and at other moments he calls her ‘dearest sister,’ and even ‘beloved.’ When we remember the gulf that now separated them, besides his obvious duty to guide her, we shall accept the contrast of their letters without using harsh words of the distracted abbot. But the pathos and the humanity of his closing paragraph defeated his purpose, and the whole soul of the abbess flames forth in her reply.
It opens with a calm and somewhat artificial quarrel with the superscription of his letter, but soon breaks out into strong reproach for his talk of death. ‘How hast thou been able to frame such thoughts, dearest?’ she asks; ‘how hast thou found words to convey them?’ ‘Spare me, beloved,’ she says again: ‘talk not of death until the dread angel comes near.’ Moreover, she and her nuns would be too distracted with grief to pray over his corpse. Seneca and Lucan are quoted to support her. Indeed she soon lapses into words which the theologian would call blasphemous. She turns her face to the heavens with that old, old cry, Where is Thy boasted justice? They were untouched in the days of their sinful joy, but smitten with a thousand sorrows as soon as their bed had the sacramental blessing. ‘Oh, if I dared but call God cruel to me! Oh, most wretched of all creatures that I am!’ Women have ever been the ruin of men—Adam, Solomon, Samson, Job—she runs through the long category of man’s sneaking accusations.