ABÉLARD AND HÉLOÏSE
Love-Letters
In the Paris cemetery of Père-Lachaise, on summer Sundays, flowers and wreaths are still laid on the tomb of a woman who died nearly 750 years ago. It is the grave of Heloise and of her lover Abelard, the hero and heroine of one of the world's greatest love stories. Born in 1079, Abelard, after a scholastic activity of twenty-five years, reached the highest academic dignity in Christendom--the Chair of the Episcopal School in Paris. When he was 38 he first saw Heloise, then a beautiful girl of 17, living with her uncle, Canon Fulbert. Abelard became her tutor, and fell madly in love with her. The passion was as madly returned. The pair fled to Brittany, where a child was born. There was a secret marriage, but because she imagined it would hinder Abelard's advancement, Heloise denied the marriage. Fulbert was furious. With hired assistance, he invaded Abelard's rooms and brutally mutilated him. Abelard, distressed by this degradation, turned monk. But he must have Heloise turn nun; she agreed, and at 22 took the veil. Ten years later she learned that Abelard had not found content in his retirement, and wrote to him the first of the five famous letters. Abelard died in 1142, and his remains were given into the keeping of Heloise. Twenty years afterwards she died, and was buried beside him at Paraclete. In 1800 their remains were taken to Paris, and in 1817 interred in Père-Lachaise Cemetery. The love-letters, originally written in Latin, about 1128, were first published in Paris in 1616.
I.--Héloïse to Abélard
Heloise has just seen a "consolatory" letter of Abelard's to a friend. She had no right to open it, but in justification of the liberty she took, she flatters herself that she may claim a privilege over everything which comes from that hand.
"But how dear did my curiosity cost me! What disturbance did it occasion, and how surprised I was to find the whole letter filled with a particular and melancholy account of our misfortunes! Though length of time ought to have closed up my wounds, yet the seeing them described by you was sufficient to make them all open and bleed afresh. Surely all the misfortunes of lovers are conveyed to them through the eyes. Upon reading your letter I feel all mine renewed. Observe, I beseech you, to what a wretched condition you have reduced me; sad, afflicted, without any possible comfort unless it proceed from you. Be not then unkind, nor deny me, I beg of you, that little relief which you only can give. Let me have a faithful account of all that concerns you; I would know everything, be it ever so unfortunate. Perhaps by mingling my sighs with yours I may make your sufferings less, for it has been said that all sorrows divided are made lighter.
"I shall always have this, if you please, and it will always be agreeable to me that, when I receive a letter from you, I shall know you still remember me. I have your picture in my room. I never pass it without stopping to look at it. If a picture, which is but a mute representation of an object, can give such pleasure, what cannot letters inspire? We may write to each other; so innocent a pleasure is not denied us. I shall read that you are my husband, and you shall see me sign myself your wife. In spite of all our misfortunes, you may be what you please in your letter. Having lost the substantial pleasures of seeing and possessing you, I shall in some measure compensate this loss by the satisfaction I shall find in your writing. There I shall read your most sacred thoughts; I shall carry them always about with me; I shall kiss them every moment. I cannot live if you will not tell me that you still love me.
"When you write to me you will write to your wife; marriage has made such a correspondence lawful and since you can without the least scandal satisfy me why will you not? I am not only engaged by my vows, but I have the fear of my uncle before me. There is nothing, then, that you need dread. You have been the occasion of all my misfortunes, you therefore must be the instrument of my comfort. You cannot but remember (for lovers cannot forget) with what pleasure I have passed whole days in hearing your discourse; how, when you were absent, I shut myself from everyone to write to you; how uneasy I was till my letter had come to your hands; what artful management it required to engage messengers. This detail perhaps surprises you, and you are in pain for what may follow. But I am no longer ashamed that my passion for you had no bounds, for I have done more than all this.
"I have hated myself that I might love you; I came hither to ruin myself in a perpetual imprisonment that I might make you live quietly and at ease. Nothing but virtue, joined to a love perfectly disengaged from the senses, could have produced such effects. Vice never inspires anything like this; it is too much enslaved to the body. This was my cruel uncle's notion; he measured my virtue by the frailty of my sex, and thought it was the man and not the person I loved. But he has been guilty to no purpose. I love you more than ever, and so revenge myself on him. I will still love you with all the tenderness of my soul till the last moment of my life."
Formerly, she tells him, the man was the least she valued in him. It was his heart she desired to possess. "You cannot but be entirely persuaded of this by the extreme unwillingness I showed to marry you, though I knew that the name of wife was honourable in the world and holy in religion; yet the name of your mistress had greater charms because it was more free. The bonds of matrimony, however honourable, still bear with them a necessary engagement, and I was very unwilling to be necessitated to love always a man who would perhaps not always love me. I despised the name of wife that I might live happy with that of mistress."