One warm evening in the summer of 1836, the late Count Charles De
Rémusat, sauntering through the streets of Paris in that frame of mind
which the French describe by the expressive word _desœuvrement_, was
arrested by the _affiche_ on the portals of the Ambigu-Comique. It
announced a drama by MM. Anicet Bourgeois and François cornue, called
_Heloïse et Abelard_. It had been running for several months; and the
vacant politician entered the house and settled himself in a _fauteuil
d’orchestre_. The future friend and colleague of Thiers, whom he
preceded to the grave only by a narrow interval, was already a person
of some distinction; but though in many respects a severe critic,
he was singularly tolerant of the literary defects and the artistic
shortcomings of dramas intended to propitiate the popular taste by
fertility of incident and freshness of invention. That evening,
however, he confessed himself displeased. The play violated familiar
records without either heightening or purifying passion, and sacrificed
history to fiction, without rendering it more philosophical.
But though he walked homeward with that sense of dissatisfaction which
is generally experienced by persons of education and sensibility after
a visit to the modern theatre, the play continued to haunt him. With
its subject he must have been already thoroughly familiar, for are not
Eloisa and Abelard the most celebrated lovers in history? But though
at college he had been distinguished by the elegance of his lyrics, De
Rémusat had attained the meridian of life without acquiring, or even
attempting to acquire, a distinct reputation as a man of letters. Like
most of the aspiring spirits of his time, he had betaken himself to
political journalism, trusting that it would conduct to parliamentary
honors, and obtain for him a share in the direction of affairs of
State. At first a somewhat docile pupil of Guizot, by the time the
famous _Globe_ was started he had shaken himself entirely free from the
influence of that doctrinaire statesman, and he shortly became one of
its most indefatigable contributors. How successfully he had employed
his pen may be surmised from the fact that his name appears in the
list of signatures to the famous Protest against the _Ordonnances_ of
Polignac, which caused the Revolution of July. The first Parliament
summoned after the accession of Louis Philippe found him, at the
age of thirty-three, Member for Muret a constituency in the Haute
Garonne which he continued to represent till the Revolution of 1848.
Justifiably ambitious of power, that he might advance the cause of
Constitutional Government, he abstained from associating his reputation
with non-political compositions; and this sternly practical resolve
seemed, through long persistence, at length to have weaned him from all
interest in the more subtle workings of the intellect.
But there is something stronger than the resolves of the most resolute
man, and that is innate disposition, or natural bent, which, try
to rid himself of it as he may, _tamen usque recurret_. De Rémusat
flattered himself that, in strenuously devoting his faculties to
political journalism, in writing leading articles on the current
topics of the hour, in examining Parliamentary Bills, and in composing
Legislative Reports, he had stifled in himself the original taint
of an evil passion for literature. That accidental visit to the
Ambigu-Comique, the representation of that inferior and distorted
play, stirred in him afresh his native passion. He could not get rid
of the figure of that strange personage, at once exalted philosopher
and frensied lover, belonging unquestionably to history, yet made, it
would seem, expressly for the purposes of romance. On the very morrow
of that eventful evening, he might have been seen in the library of
the Chamber of Deputies, asking for the volume that contained the
correspondence of Abelard and Eloisa. The chamber was not sitting, for
it was vacation time; and he carried the book with him to Lafitte, in
the Haute Garonne, where he had recently established his household
gods. He perused it without delay or intermission; for the man who,
taking up the correspondence of the separated lovers of the Paraclete,
could lay it down unfinished, may rest assured that he has little
genuine interest in the more romantic workings of human nature. But on
the 6th of September the Ministry of Casimir-Périer was overthrown,
and Count Molé was summoned to form a Cabinet. His Minister of the
Interior was M. Gasparin, and De Rémusat was appointed Under-Secretary
of State for the same department. Had the career of the new Ministry
been a protracted one, it is possible that time would have divorced
his attention from Abelard and mediæval philosophy. But in less
than a twelvemonth Molé’s Cabinet was overthrown, and the liberated
Under-Secretary buried himself once more in the passions and dialectics
of the twelfth century. He spent much of the winter of 1837 in studying
the period in which the Gallic Socrates—Gallorum Socrates, it was the
pleasure of Abelard’s followers to designate him—had lived, triumphed,
and suffered; and in the course of the summer of the following year
a “Philosophical Drama” on the subject was completed. For nearly
forty years it lay in manuscript in the author’s drawer, though he
occasionally permitted himself the indulgence of reading portions of it
in the intellectual salons of Paris which he frequented. Its success
in those select but critical circles was considerable; and it was
probably the encouragement thus extended to him that led to his writing
_Abélard, sa Vie, sa Philosophie, et sa Theologie_, the best account
extant of the great Conceptualist, his metaphysics, and his fate.
The latter work was published as long ago as 1845. Why, then, was the
drama kept back? The reason is a curious one. Perhaps in foraging so
extensively among the records of the twelfth century, De Rémusat had
become impressed with the mediæval motto, “Beware the man of one book.”
He was afraid, so his son assures us, to risk his reputation with the
public as a statesman and a man of affairs, by appearing before it
as the writer of a drama, even a “philosophical” one, on a subject
notoriously romantic.
“Il faut bien dire,” says M. Paul De Rémusat, “que la première raison
de mon père pour refuser de publier le drame d’Abélard, c’était la
pensée que, dans notre pays, les hommes sont d’avance et dès leur
début, et qu’il ne voulait point sortir de la situation littéraire
et politique où il s’était d’abord placé. Il avait vu trop souvent
la défiance accuellir une œuvre nouvelle et étrangère aux premiers
essais d’un écrivain. L’idée d’un homme universel, ou seulement doué
de talents variés, est rarement acceptée, et ce qu’on gagne en étendu
paraît presque toujours perdu en profondeur. L’example de Voltaire,
qui était si longtemps discuté et contesté, est plus effrayant pour
les audacieux que rassurant pour les timides. Mon père n’espérait
pas que l’on fit en sa faveur une exception à la loi commune de
la spécialité de l’esprit. Il lui semblait qu’il n’eût acquit en
littérature quelque réputation qu’au dépens de son autorité politique.”
These scruples, at least in the case of De Rémusat, seem excessive.
The French _bourgeoisie_ have never had that rooted antipathy to men
of genius which is characteristic of the middle class in England; and
it certainly would not have taken the better part of fifty years to
convince them that the author of _Vivian Grey_ had in him the stuff
of a practical and hard-headed statesman. Moreover, a philosophical
drama, by the very sobriety of its title, protects its author against
the charge of excessive literary levity. Finally, the political career
of the author of _Abélard_, though not devoid of distinction, was
hardly of that commanding sort which might console some men, at its
close, for the sacrifice of more congenial tastes and more enduring
fame. He became Minister of the Interior, for a brief period, in
Thiers’ Cabinet of 1840, and after the Revolution of 1848 he remained
a member of the Constituent and Legislative Assemblies. But the _Coup
d’état_ practically put an end to his political prospects. It is true
he reappeared, for a short interval, as the _fides Achates_ of Thiers
during that statesman’s brief tenure of power after the Franco-German
War. But he was too advanced in years, and too completely overshadowed
by his conspicuous friend, who concentrated all business and all
distinction in his own person, to add anything to his former reputation
as a politician. His son observes that, in withholding the publication
of his drama upon Abélard, he perhaps remembered one of the most
touching observations of his hero, “_Dieu punit en moi la présomption
des lettrés_.” I read the moral of De Rémusat’s life differently. The
penalty attached to the presumption of men-of-letters he undoubtedly
escaped. It was the politician whom Heaven punished, for presuming to
think that a man can arrange and map out his career irrespectively of
the gifts with which it has endowed him, or that it is permissible,
in deference to the prejudices of the vulgar, to protect one’s brow
against the imperishable bays of the poet, lest they should be denied
the tinsel and quickly-fading wreaths of the popular politician.
He lived, we will trust, to estimate the relative value of things
more wisely, though he might have learnt, while studying the fate of
Abélard, that notoriety, which is the nearest approach to fame to be
secured by a politician, is “fantastic, fickle, fierce, and vain.” But
if he learned the lesson, he learned it in long years of exclusion from
worthless power. He returned to his books when universal suffrage,
allied with despotism, brought forth that atrocious bastard, Imperial
Democracy; and he found in pursuits, his native passion for which he
had once been half ashamed to own, something more than compensation for
the loss of personal rivalries and sterile debates.
At the same time, let us beware of doing De Rémusat an injustice.
That he was one of those men who caress their reputation, and, in
doing so, too often mar it, is certain; for we have his own avowal
of the infirmity, corroborated by the statements of his son. But, in
accounting for the suppression of his drama upon Abélard, we must allow
something to genuine and, let me hasten to add, excessive modesty.
It is not the voice of the literary coquette, but of the diffident
literary workman, that we overhear in these charming sentences, to be
found in the preface to his prose labors upon Abélard:
Changeant de but et de travail, je m’occupai alors de mieux connaître
l’Abélard de la réalité, d’apprendre sa vie, de pénétrer ses
écrits, d’approfondir ses doctrines; et voilà comme s’est fait le
livre que je soumets en ce moment au jugement du public. Destiné à
servir d’accompagnement et presque de compensation à une tentative
hasardeuse, il paraît seul aujour d’hui. Des illusions téméraires sont
à demi dissipées; une sage voix que je voudrais écouter toujours, me
conseille de renoncer aux fictions passionnées et de dire tristement
adieu à la muse qui les inspire.
. . . . . . Abi
Quo blandi juvenum te revocant preces.
No doubt a mere literary _succès d’estime_ would not have satisfied
one who had been an Under-Secretary of State; and great literary
reputations were being made in France at the time this resolution
was taken. But De Rémusat goes on to say that he “tenait à expier en
quelque sorte une composition d’un genre moins sévère,” and frankly
stating that the drama was “une de ces œuvres enfin qui n’ont qu’une
excuse possible, celle du talent,” he, with sincere humility, put it
back in his drawer.
Was he right? Having read his Philosophical Drama, I am of opinion
that he was wrong. It exhibits literary faculty of a high order, and
it is deficient in none of those penetrating qualities of intelligence
which serve to render the imagination at once free and efficient
when engaged in dramatic work. We do not say that it reaches the
heaven of invention; and, indeed, its author was inspired by no such
soaring ambition. He writes in prose, and prose which, though always
classical and often eloquent, never seeks to pass the boundary between
prose and poetry invariably respected by the judicious. But he had
saturated himself with the atmosphere of the time in which the action
of his drama is laid; and he had represented to himself in clear and
well-defined outlines the character of his central figure. To do all
this is surely to write a work of no little difficulty with no little
success.
Shortly after quitting Nantes by the post-road that conducts to
Poitiers, the traveller passes, before reaching Clisson, a village
consisting of one long street, which, if he thinks it worth while to
inquire, he will be told is called Le Pallet. No one, however, will
concern himself to add that behind the unpretending but venerable
church which stands on a slight elevation to the left, above the last
cottages in the place, are to be seen some all but submerged walls,
and here and there the choked vestiges of an ancient moat. These are
all that remain of the castle of Le Pallet, which was levelled with
the ground more than four centuries and a half ago, in the course of
the wars that succeeded the attack directed by Marguerite de Clisson
against John V., Duke of Brittany. Hard by is an insignificant stream,
known as the Sanguèze, and which evidently owes its name, like the
Italian Sanguinetto that flows into the Lake of Thrasymene, to the
blood of battle that is recorded to have once dyed its waters.
In 1079, the Castle of Le Pallet stood intact on its little eminence;
and in that year, though on what day of the calendar cannot be said,
the famous dialectician, Pierre Abélard, was born within its walls. His
father, its lord, was called Bérenger; his mother’s name was Lucie.
This much may be asserted, with every probability that it is true;
but these bare facts are about all that tradition has preserved, or
literary industry unearthed. Bérenger, though inured, like everyone
in his position in those warlike times, to the exercise of arms,
manifested a predilection for letters rarely encountered in his class,
and is said to have intentionally inspired his sons with a love for
philosophical studies, not easily reconciled with the performance
of knightly duties. There were, at least, three other sons of the
marriage, Raoul, Porcaire, and Dagobert, and a daughter, Dényse; and if
we may trust the testimony of the first of the Letters which compose
the famous correspondence of Eloisa and Abelard, into all Bérenger’s
sons alike was inculcated the notion that distinction in knowledge
is a worthier object of ambition than the trophies of war. Pierre
manifested a much readier disposition than his brothers to accept the
paternal estimate of the relative value of courage and culture; and
though he was the eldest-born, he waived his rights of inheritance
in order more freely to pursue the path indicated by his parent. The
story is a strange, not to say an incredible one, for times when the
sword was the only true badge of honor; and we are driven to conclude
either that Abelard sought to remove from himself the stigma which he
would have incurred by such a choice, had he not surrounded it with
the halo of filial duty, or that his biographers were determined that
dramatic completeness should attend his character from the very outset
of his career. His own words are that he deliberately abandoned the
court of Mars in order to shelter himself in the lap of Minerva.
Probably the only conclusion that can safely be drawn from all the
statements respecting his selection is, that he developed at an early
age extraordinary talents for the acquisition of learning and the
conduct of philosophical discussion, and that he was freely permitted
to indulge his bent by parents who had no interest in thwarting him.
It was impossible, however, that he should cultivate his passion
for letters and philosophy within the boundaries of Brittany, then,
as now, perhaps the least instructed portion of what was not yet
territorially known as France. He travelled from place to place in
search of persons who taught dialectics, and even thus early he prided
himself upon imitating the ancient philosophers to the extent of being
a peripatician or vagrant. Among his preceptors at this period, the
name of one only is known to us; nor is it possible to say where it
was that Abelard reaped the benefit of his teaching. Jean Roscelin,
Canon of Compiègne, was already under ecclesiastical ban for his
uncompromising Nominalism, when Abelard entered upon his teens, and for
a time at least had to take refuge in England. Some have contended that
Abelard must have passed a portion of his youth upon our shores; but
the supposition is as utterly without proof as the assertion of Otho of
Frisingen that Roscelin was Abelard’s first instructor in philosophy.
It is more probable that the young catechumen encountered the
ostracised teacher in some of those more hidden and remote conferences
of learning, to which the hostility of his ecclesiastical superiors had
compelled him to limit his philosophical energy.
But what was that which Abelard wished to learn and that Roscelin,
or any teacher, or, as we should say, Professor of the period, had
to communicate? And how was the knowledge, which some sought to
impart and many to acquire, conserved? Universities had not yet been
called into being; and no great centres of recognized learning drew
to themselves the youth or crystallized the opinions of an entire
nation. In their stead, and operating as yet as sole substitute, were
Episcopal Schools, under the immediate protection and supervision of
the Archbishop or Bishop of the diocese; and it depended almost as
much on the ambition of a Prelate as upon the importance of his See,
whether his School acquired a wide renown, or remained the obscure
head-quarters of local instruction. Deriving his faculties from the
Bishop, there presided over each Episcopal School a clerical lecturer,
or “scholastic”; and all those who attended his classes, or course,
were termed his scholars. The success of his teaching and the number
of his followers necessarily shed lustre on his episcopal superior
and upon the province in which the latter resided; and the emulation
which burned among the more intelligent and aspiring members of the
Episcopate, in their endeavors to secure for their respective schools
Masters of erudition and eloquence, was almost an exact anticipation
of the spirit of honorable rivalry that subsists among the Governing
Bodies of modern German Universities. Those who favor the doctrine that
there is nothing new under the sun, will perhaps be disposed to look
backward rather than forward for a parallel to the influence of the
Scholastics of the Middle Ages. Hippias, Prodikos, Gorgias, and other
less famous men, whose names have been preserved to us by Plato, passed
from city to city in ancient Greece, teaching and disputing. Some, we
are told, amassed considerable fortunes; while one and all gathered
about them the restless brains of their generation, who carried through
the land the fame of their doctrines and the brilliance of their
rhetoric.
De Rémusat’s drama opens in the cloister of Nôtre-Dame, where a number
of scholars are assembled to hear a lecture by Guillaume de Champeaux.
The master has not yet arrived; and the first scene is passed in what
the undergraduates of the nineteenth century call chaff. Finally, the
great lecturer makes his appearance; the scholars crowd around him,
and he proceeds to expound his thesis of the reality of Universals, or
the substantiality of abstract ideas. In a word, he is the champion
of Realism as opposed to Nominalism, and maintains, for example, that
Man exists as really and essentially as any individual man, and that
Humanity is not a mere name or intellectual abstraction, but just as
much an entity as a building composed of so many stones. At the end of
his discourse he says, “Are you all satisfied, or is anyone present
harassed by doubt? If so, let him speak, and I will answer him.”
Abelard rises. He is unknown equally to master and to scholars, but he
soon enchains attention by the vigor of his dialectic. He involves the
lecturer in a series of contradictions, and ends by establishing his
proposition that Universals are neither realities, nor mere names, but
Conceptions, and by winning over the whole class to his views. In vain
Guillaume de Champeaux pronounces the word heresy, and points out that
Abelard bases his theories on the dangerous foundation of human reason.
The remainder of the First Act, which is entitled “La Philosophie,” is
devoted to depicting the supremacy gradually obtained by the brilliant
young Breton over the students of Nôtre-Dame, until, Guillaume de
Champeaux finally abandoned by his scholars, Abelard can exclaim,
“_Maintenant l’Ecole de Paris, c’est moi!_”
The Second Act, the scene of which is laid at Laon a year later, is
headed “La Théologie”; and in it Abelard acquires over Anselme of
Laon, in theological controversy, a victory analogous to that he had
previously won over Guillaume de Champeaux in the realm of metaphysics.
The audience is the same, for the students of Nôtre-Dame have followed
Abelard to Laon; and the same is the weapon with which his triumph
is achieved. “When theology,” he exclaims in the course of a warm
disputation with Anselme, “is not seconded by dialectic, vainly does
it knock at the door of the spirit; it is reason that holds the key,
and opens to the truth.” Anselme replies with anathemas. Then Abelard
bursts out:—
“You hear him. My friends, he is old and feeble. Be good to him, but
lead him away. His advanced age unfits him for these wrestlings with
science. Take him into the air. Alas! Saint Matthew was right when he
said you may not put new wine into old bottles.”
His words are received with acclamation; and the overthrow of Anselme
de Laon, in spite of his friendship with Saint Bernard, is as complete
as the dethronement of Guillaume de Champeaux. In an incredibly short
space of time, Abelard has seen the fulfilment of his most ambitious
dreams, and he finds himself surrounded by a band of scholars who
regard him as the oracle of his age. Yet in the midst of these
astounding triumphs, he experiences “a mixture of impatience and
weakness, of ardor and weariness,” and thus soliloquizes:—
“My fondest hopes have been surpassed. Withal a secret disquietude,
the source of which escapes me, leaves me dissatisfied. I feel
agitated, fatigued, worn out. Everything with me has succeeded;
nothing is wanting to me that I can name, and yet I am not happy. A
vague sense of irritation, which I cannot overcome, prevents me from
delighting in anything; this life of struggle is arid and devouring,
and in the glowing eyes of my scholars I often discern more joy than I
can attain by all the efforts of my intellect.”
It is not difficult to surmise the disease from which Abelard was
suffering. It was
The dreary desert of the mind,
The waste of feelings unemployed;
and it is just as easy to guess the cure that is forthcoming. The Third
Act is called “L’Amour,” and we find Abelard installed, for so many
hours a day, in the house of Fulbert, Canon of Nôtre Dame—for the scene
has again shifted to Paris—indoctrinating his erudite niece Eloisa into
all the learning of the time. In De Rémusat’s drama she is represented
as already in love, if not with the person, with the renown of Abelard;
and before his second visit she thus communes with her thoughts:—
He is coming. I cannot read, except with him. I understand nothing,
except through him. Before he came I fancied I knew something,
appreciated the ancients, and felt what is beautiful. I was a child
feeding upon memory; that is all. It is he, he alone, who has revealed
to me the secret of things, who has shown me the essence of my
thoughts, who has initiated me into the mysteries of the spirit.
He arrives, and the lesson begins. She is all attention. But Abelard
wanders from the theme. He would fain, he says, tear himself from the
crowd, and study with her. “We would read, we would work together—or
rather, for what avails this study that consumes the soul—we would
enjoy tranquillity, long walks, a bright sun, a beautiful country, a
boat upon the river, or the fire-side, even as we are now. Should we
not be happy?” Her answers do not satisfy him, for they are modest and
measured. “You do not understand me,” he exclaims, with impatience, and
she begs to be forgiven for being so inapt a scholar. No, it is not
that. They resume the lesson, but this time it is the _Heroides_ of
Ovid that lie before them. Together they read _Hero to Leander_, and
_Leander to Hero_, those two exquisite Love Letters, which will always
make Ovid a contemporary. “Galeotto fu il libro e chi lo scrisse,” says
Dante, in that unmatched description of the _Tempo de’ dolci sospiri_,
and _Di dubbiosi desiri_; and what happened to Francesca dà Polenta and
Paolo Malatesta when reading
Di Lancilotto, come amor lo strinse,
happened equally to Abelard and Eloisa when reading the imaginary
correspondence of Hero and Leander. “O, tu es si belle!” “C’est toi qui
es beau.” “Beau de notre amour.”
Very French, no doubt. But it is done with considerable skill, and
occupies almost as many pages as I have devoted to its words. Love
scenes cannot be compressed. They are, of necessity, long, except
to those who figure in them. Whether this was the portion of his
philosophical drama which the serious statesman was fond of reading
aloud in the intellectual _salons_ of Paris, I cannot say. But, if it
was, I suspect that some of the more staid matrons among his audience
repeated the words put by the author into the mouth of his heroine,
“C’est comme la vapeur de l’encens, cela enivre.”
Meanwhile, Abelard neglects his public duties, and his attachment to
one fair student becomes the subject of speculation and banter among
his scholars. By degrees the weakness of the great Scholastic is
bruited in the streets, and ballads are sung at night in the public
places associating his name with the niece of Fulbert. One of these
Abelard himself overhears. Here is one strophe with its refrain:—
C’est l’histoire singulière
A se raconter le soir,
Du maître et l’ecolière,
De l’amour et du savoir.
Fillettes, fillettes,
Trop lire est mauvais.
Cueillez des violettes
Au prè Saint-Gervais.
He is alarmed, and his consternation is increased when he learns from
Eloisa that the suspicions of her uncle have been aroused. There is but
one remedy—marriage. Eloisa protests; for will not marriage rob Abelard
of glory and preferment? At last she consents, but with the utmost
reluctance, to secret nuptials. Abelard himself, in the celebrated
letter written by him, _Ad Amicum_, declares that Fulbert was privy to
their union, and that it was the self-sacrificing denial by Eloisa,
after the marriage, that any union had taken place, which roused the
vindictiveness of her uncle. De Rémusat, I suppose for the sake of
dramatic effect, represents Fulbert as ignorant of the marriage, until
the mutilated body of Abelard lies at her feet:—
_Fulbert._
Tenez, voilà votre fiancé.
_Heloise_ (se jetant sur son amant).
Mon mari!
_Fulbert._
Son mari! Je suis perdu.
So ends the Third Act. The fourth is called, somewhat arbitrarily,
“La Politique,” and is mainly concerned with the condemnation of
Abelard by the Council of Soissons. True, the authority of the King
is invoked against him; but the enemies by whom Abelard is pursued
are theologians, and it is they who humiliated him by compelling him
publicly to burn his treatise on the Trinity. But for the reappearance
of Eloisa at this critical juncture, the Fourth Act would be somewhat
tedious. There is no historical foundation for her intervention; but
it is strictly in harmony with what we know of her character, and De
Rémusat turns it to admirable account. Abelard asks why she seeks out
one who is condemned, who is proscribed, who is silenced? She replies
that she has come to be with him on the greatest day of his life.
Nothing was wanting to his glory but martyrdom; and now he has obtained
it. His work is finished; let him abjure the world that has treated him
so ill.
Viens, allons-nous-en, quittons le siècle, fuyons ce pays, la France,
le monde chrétien. Chez les infidèles nous trouverons plus de repos,
nous serons plus ignorés, nous vivrons plus heureux. Cherchons la
retraite la plus profonde, la plus lointaine, la plus perdue; cachons
à tous notre vie et notre bonheur.
Next she invokes the seductive allurements of nature, and presents to
him a picture of rural loveliness and felicity, recalling the famous
invitation to sunny climes in _The Lady of Lyons_:—
Nous irons vers ces climats vantés où le ciel est si pur, l’air
si doux, la fleur si embaumée.... Ensemble, nous verrons se lever
l’aurore; ensemble, nous verrons le jour finir, et ta main dans ma
main, mon cœur sur ton cœur, nous n’aurons qu’une vie pour deux âmes?
Is it that these glowing words recall to Abelard what she has utterly
forgotten, and what she was too tender and disinterested a spirit
even to remember? He cannot rise to the height of her great argument.
“Fuyez, que je ne vous revoie jamais,” he replies. “Votre présence est
un supplice, laissez moi!” Her answer reveals the secret of her whole
nature:—
En vérité, je ne vous comprends pas. Vous êtes malheureux, opprimé,
abandonné, et vous repoussez le seul être au monde qui vous aime et
qui vous reste.
But it is all in vain. She still fails to understand him, and, with the
faith and humility of all true love, she asks if she has offended him:—
Non, je ne suis pas offensé, remettez-vous, je vous remercie. Héloïse,
vous êtes bonne et dévouée, je suis profondement touché de vos soins.
Vous allez retourner à votre monastère. Vous savez combien cette
maison a besoin de votre présence; ne m’oubliez pas, priez pour moi,
vous et vos religieuses.
Growing still colder, his last words are, “Adieu, Madame, je me
recommande à vos prières.” She kisses his hand, and exclaims, “Et qui
priera pour moi?”
The Fifth Act, entitled “La Mort,” is passed in the Convent of
Cluny, where Abelard is a sort of ecclesiastical prisoner under
the supervision of Saint Bernard. His one sole desire is to make a
pilgrimage to Rome, to explain his doctrines to the Pope, and to get
the ban of heresy removed from his teaching. But he is broken in
health, and troubled in brain. His mind wanders. In sleep he murmurs
the name of Eloisa. His sole consolation is the faithful attachment of
a former pupil, who brings him ever and anon news of her who is living
and praying at Paracleta. At last he expires; and the drama closes with
the tolling of the convent bell.
I have given, I fear, but an inadequate idea of the merits of the play;
for its chief value is in the full and varied picture it presents of
the life and manners of the time. It is almost needless to say that
it is not a stage but a closet drama, and it has the necessary defect
of every such composition; it is a little wearisome. But no form, and
no treatment, could blunt the interest that must ever cling to the
pathetic story of Abelard and Eloisa; and I should be surprised to
hear that any reader could close the book without feeling that it is
suffused with the _lachrymæ rerum_ that unfailingly touch the human
heart.
For the rest, I do not know that anyone could treat the story of
the unhappy lovers of the Paraclete, imaginatively, in such a way
as to disarm criticism. I do not refer to any technical difficulty,
arising out of the central catastrophe in Abelard’s life. To the true
imaginative artist, that would mean as little as it meant to Eloisa.
Indeed, it would assist him to obtain compassion for Abelard, just as
it made Eloisa love him only all the more. It is the something beyond
compassion of which Abelard stands in need, that would baffle the most
skilful artistic handling. He would necessarily have to be the hero,
and, unfortunately, he is not heroic. Were it not that such a woman
as Eloisa loved him, I should be inclined to say that he was hateful.
I doubt if there ever lived the man altogether worthy of such a love
as hers; yet one would be sorry to think that hundreds of men do not
exist more worthy of it than he was. One forgives him much for her
sake; yet it is her perfection that makes him look the more imperfect.
The contrast between her simplicity and his complexity, between her
single-minded devotion to him and his many-sided calculations of what
would be best for himself, ends by making him odious; and one is
compelled to acknowledge the truth of that bitter saying of Rousseau,
“Tout homme réflechi est méchant.”
It is to no man-of-letters, recent or remote, neither to Bussy-Rabutin
nor to Colardeau, neither to Pope nor to De Rémusat, but to the famous
Correspondence of the pathetic pair, that we must turn if we are to
understand either their character or their story. The first letter is
written by Abelard, not to Eloisa, but to “a Friend,” and relates the
leading incidents of his life. Nowhere, it has often been remarked,
does a man so thoroughly, because so unconsciously, betray the secret
of his disposition as in his letters. _Raconter mon histoire_ is,
to this day, a favorite occupation with Frenchmen; and Abelard is
garrulous about his own merits, his own grief, his own successes.
He speaks contemptuously of William of Champeaux, and with just as
little respect of Anselm of Laon. It was, however, customary in the
Middle Ages for controversialists to treat each other with scant
courtesy; the flattering consideration which people who sneer at
each other in private nowadays exhibit towards each other in public
not having yet come into fashion. It is when Abelard narrates how he
made the acquaintance of Eloisa that we get the full measure of his
fundamentally coarse and selfish nature. Fancy a man writing of a
woman who had loved him, and loved him as Eloisa loved Abelard, that
she was _per faciem non infima_, or, as we should say in English, “not
bad-looking”! Fancy his being able to remember, let alone to describe
without intolerable shame, that, having heard of her accomplishments,
he deliberately planned to win her affections, adding that he felt
sure this would be easy, because “tanti quippe tunc nominis eram, et
juventutis et formæ gratia præeminebam, ut quamcunque feminarum nostro
dignarer amore nullam vererer repulsam,” that he was so celebrated, so
young, and so good-looking, that he had no fear of being repulsed by
any woman whom he honored with his love! The repugnance inspired by
such language would be great, even if he had afterwards appreciated the
prize he had begun by coveting so basely. It is not easy to forgive
Saint Augustine for his conduct towards the mother of Deodatus. But he,
at least, describes the passions of his youth with sincere humility and
profound remorse; whilst Abelard recalls without a pang the colloquies
and correspondence he planned in order to influence Eloisa. In the same
spirit he narrates the tender, passionate passages that ensued. He is
equally ignoble when Fulbert discovers their attachment. He excuses
himself by reminding her uncle “quanta ruina summos quoque viros ab
ipso statim humani generis exordio mulieres dejecerint,” how many of
the greatest men, from the beginning of time, have been ruined by
the seductions of women. By way of compensation, he tells us that he
offered to marry Eloisa on condition that their union should be kept
secret, _ne famæ detrimentum caperem_, lest, forsooth, his fame should
suffer detriment. If, instead of hiring a couple of bravos Fulbert had
taken him by the heels and flung him into the Seine, one’s sense of
justice would have been better satisfied.
Turn we a moment from the composed reminiscences of this circumspect
dialectician, to the woman _per faciem non infima_, whose heart he had
broken and whose life he had ruined. In obedience to his wish she had
taken the veil, and writes to him from the Convent of the Paraclete,
made over to her by him, and of which she was now the Lady Abbess. She
has read his letter “To a friend,” of which she says, with unconscious
irony, that though it was composed to soothe that friend’s sorrows, it
is full of the sorrows of the writer himself. She finds this the most
natural thing in the world; and all she asks is that to her, too, he
will write, and that he will instruct her, who gave herself entirely
to him, how to direct those who have given themselves entirely to God.
She reminds him, not reproachfully, but in order to convince him that
she has need of him still, that at a word from him she had completed
her own ruin, and that, though he was the only object of her love,
she had promptly taken the veil at his bidding, “ut te tam corporis
mei quam animi unicum possessorum ostenderem,” in order to show that
she belonged to him, and to him alone, body, heart, and soul. “God
is my witness,” she goes on, “that in loving you I loved yourself
only, not anything you could give or bring me.” Then, going to the
utmost limit and horizon of feminine love and self-sacrifice, she
adds: “Et si uxoris nomen sanctius ac validus videtur, dulcius mihi
semper extitit amicæ vocabulum; aut, si non indigneris, concubinæ vel
scorti; ut, quo me videlicet pro te amplius humiliarem, ampliorem apud
te consequerer gratiam, et sic etiam excellentiæ tuæ gloriam minus
læderem.” How completely Pope has falsified this sentiment in his
famous paraphrase! His Epistle of _Eloisa to Abelard_ is, no doubt, an
admirable composition; but it is unfair to Eloisa, since its main note
is passion, not self-sacrifice, and self-sacrifice was the beginning,
middle, and end of her love for Abelard. Once only she reproaches him.
He had made her take the religious habit before assuming it himself.
Why? Did he doubt her? She is overwhelmed with grief at the thought;
for does he not know that she would have gladly either preceded or
followed him into the jaws of hell? Nay, she must perforce have done
so, for her heart was not hers, but his. Why, then, does he not write
and console her? Was it concupiscence, rather than affection, that
made them one? For her part, she has no difficulty in answering the
question. “Dum tecum carnali fruerer voluptate, utrum id amore vel
libidine agerem incertum pluribus habebatur.” Can they, she asks, be in
any doubt now? “Nunc enim finis indicat quo id inchoaverrim principio.”
The end surely shows by what motive she was impelled at the beginning.
Everything she has given up—himself, the world, pleasure, and freedom;
reserving to herself nothing but the luxury of still executing
his will. Of a truth, it was so; and reading this extraordinary
correspondence, anyone who is curious on the subject may discover for
himself the eternal distinction between
Short-memoried lust and long-remembering love.
With an utter unconsciousness of his own baseness, Abelard recalls
the arguments employed by Eloisa to dissuade him from the marriage
insisted on by him solely from dread of the anger of Fulbert and
the reproaches of the world. She invoked, he tells us, the name of
every writer, Pagan and Christian, in whose pages are portrayed the
drawbacks and disadvantages domestic life presents to a man of genius
and ambition. Cicero, Theophrastus, St. Paul, St. Jerome, all are
pressed into the service to prove that a man cannot attend both to a
wife and to philosophy. “Where is he,” she asks, “that, wishing to
dedicate himself to meditations upon the Scriptures or upon philosophy,
can put up with the cries of the nursery, the songs of the nurse that
lulls a babe to sleep, the perpetual coming and going of domestics?”
Rich men can sometimes avoid these interruptions and inconveniences;
but philosophers are never rich, and she cites Seneca to convince him
that she would be a chain round his neck, a tether to his feet. The
title of lover would be more honorable and more safe for him; and as
for her, she cares not what she is called, so long as he loves her.
Her sole ambition is to retain his affection by tenderness, and not
by worldly ties. Finding him unconvinced—for Abelard well knew that
such arguments would have no weight with Fulbert—she declared, with
sobs and tears, that it was the one step to be taken if they wanted
to destroy their happiness and to prepare for themselves a sorrow as
profound and lasting as their love. After recalling this outburst of
tender desperation, he observes, with the fine tranquillity of a truly
critical spirit, that Eloisa thereby demonstrated, as the whole world
has since acknowledged, that she was endowed with the gift of prophecy!
In order to understand and appreciate what some persons will perhaps
consider the perverse and even unfeminine expostulations of Eloisa, it
must be remembered that, in the twelfth century, marriage was supposed
to disqualify a man for a career of distinction. The celibacy of the
clergy, for which Hildebrand had battled so unremittingly, was now
definitively established, and all who aspired to employment in or about
the precincts of the Church had to sanction, by their practice, the
slur thus passed upon women. When Abelard first met Eloisa he was not
an ecclesiastic. But he was saturated with ecclesiastic ideas; and if
he was to pursue his study and exposition of Theology, he could do so
only under episcopal protection, which would never have entrusted the
defence of spiritual truths to one who had openly contracted a carnal
union. It is easy to perceive what immense value Abelard attached to
the recognition of his powers, and to the establishment of his fame;
nor is there any difficulty in surmising that he often expatiated to
Eloisa on a theme so interesting to them both. It has been said—
Man dreams of fame, but woman wakes to love.
But, waking or dreaming, Eloisa thought only of Abelard’s glory,
Abelard’s advancement. Her secret, unacknowleged love was to feed his
fame, as the hidden root and unnoticed tendrils feed the swelling
trunk, impelling it into blossom and leaf and fruit. Well might
Mr. Cousin declare, when a discussion was once raised as to who is
the greatest woman that ever lived, that Eloisa towers above all
competitors. But for the self-obliterating tenderness of her heart,
the self-asserting strength of Abelard’s intellect would long since
have been forgotten. Fancy a man worrying himself to death in order to
establish that he is not heterodox in his views concerning the reality
of Universals, while such a woman offers him, in her own particular
person, the sum and abstract of all that is worth having in the world!
Yet, in some sort, Abelard expiated his faults. I fail to see in him
the passionate champion of free thought, which De Rémusat and others
sometimes appear disposed to represent him, or it would be more easy
to extend to him the indulgence which, for that reason, has to be
yielded to a tortuous egotist like Voltaire, or to a cold-hearted
sentimentalist like Rousseau. As far as I can see, he entertained
certain metaphysical opinions, which, whether sound or otherwise, are
not of the smallest practical importance, and upon which the dignity
and happiness of mankind in no degree turn. Accused of heresy, he was
condemned; and the condemnation was peculiarly wounding to his vanity.
But he made his peace with the Church, and in one of the latest of his
letters to Eloisa is particularly anxious to convince her that he has
done so. No doubt it was not easy to battle with the strongly-organized
Theology of the times; but if anyone should ask what Abelard was to
do when accused of heresy, the answer might be that of the mother of
Horatius, who, when asked, “Que voulez vous qu’il fasse contre trois?”
replied: “Qu’il mourût!” Eloisa had died a thousand times over for his
sake. Could he not die once for his precious Universals and his tenets
on the Trinity, if he really thought them true, and so very important!
No; the only hold he has upon our indulgence is that time and suffering
at length awakened in his heart a tardy tenderness for Eloisa, and
inspired him with something like an appreciation of her unrivalled
goodness. He handed over to her his refuge of the Paraclete; and when
she wrote to him for comfort, for counsel, for spiritual explanations,
he did not withhold them. He could not be so blind, or so unmindful
of the past, as not to read between the lines, and not to perceive
that under the exposition of the difficulties she was experiencing
in directing the community of which she had become the head, there
still palpitated the recollection of the earliest instruction she had
received at his hands. Then he expounded Ovid. Now he comments on the
Scriptures. But the master was the same, and the same the pupil; and
over and over again the Abbess of the Paraclete recalls the niece of
Fulbert. We feel that she almost invents doubts, that she multiplies
scruples, and that she entangles herself in perplexities, in order
that he may solve them. In a word, she is as unchangeably in love
with him as ever. He is measured and circumspect in his replies; but
a certain vein of spiritual tenderness underlies them, and we feel
that his nature has grown nobler, and his heart is, at last, less
pre-occupied with self. Perhaps he had discerned now, when it was too
late, the value of a woman’s love, and the worthlessness of worldly
notoriety. Before he died, he begged that his body might be carried to
the Paraclete. Thither, accordingly, it was secretly transported and
lovingly interred by her who, as the Chronicle of Tours says, “_était
veritablement son amie_.”
For twenty years more, Eloisa lived on, a model of sanctity and wisdom.
Even Villon, in one of his ballads, speaks of her as “la très sage
Heloïse.” When she died, her sole request was that she might be laid
by the side of Abelard. Her injunction was obeyed; and as her body
was being lowered into the grave, that of Abelard was for an instant
reanimated, so tradition affirms, and he opened his arms to receive
her.—_National Review._