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."
And then, ecstatically recalling the old happy times, she deplores that
she has nothing left but the painful memory that they are past. Beyond
that, she has no regret except that against her will she must now be
innocent. "My misfortune was to have cruel relatives whose malice
destroyed the calm we enjoyed; had they been reasonable, I had now been
happy in the enjoyment of my dear husband. Oh, how cruel were they when
their blind fury urged a villain to surprise you in your sleep! Where
was I--where was your Heloise then? What joy should I have had in
defending my lover! I would have guarded you from violence at the
expense of my life. Oh, whither does this excess of passion hurry me?
Here love is shocked, and modesty deprives me of words."
She goes on to reproach him with his neglect and silence these ten
years. When she pronounced her "sad vow," he had protested that his
whole being was hers; that he would never live but to love Heloise. But
he has proved the "unfaithful one." Though she is immured in the
convent, it was only harsh relatives and "the unhappy consequences of
our love and your disgrace" that made her put on the habit of chastity.
She is not penitent for the past. At one moment she is swayed by the
sentiment of piety, and next moment she yields up her imagination to all
that is amorous and tender. "Among those who are wedded to God I am
wedded to a man; among the heroic supporters of the Cross I am the slave
of a human desire; at the head of a religious community I am devoted to
Abelard alone. Even here I love you as much as ever I did in the world.
If I had loved pleasures could I not have found means to gratify myself?
I was not more than twenty-two years old, and there were other men left
though I was deprived of Abelard. And yet I buried myself in a nunnery,
and triumphed over life at an age capable of enjoying it to its full
latitude. It is to you I sacrifice these remains of a transitory beauty,
these widowed nights and tedious days."
And then she closes passionately: "Oh, think of me--do not forget
me--remember my love, and fidelity, and constancy: love me as your
mistress, cherish me as your child, your sister, your wife! Remember I
still love you, and yet strive to avoid loving you. What a terrible
saying is this! I shake with horror, and my very heart revolts against
what I say. I shall blot all my paper with tears. I end my long letter
wishing you, if you desire it (would to Heaven I could!), for ever
adieu!"
_II. Abélard to Héloïse_
Abelard's answer to this letter is almost as passionate. He tells how he
has vainly sought in philosophy and religion a remedy for his disgrace;
how with equal futility he has tried to secure himself from love by the
rigours of the monastic life. He has gained nothing by it all. "If my
passion has been put under a restraint, my thoughts yet run free. I
promise myself that I will forget you, and yet cannot think of it
without loving you. After a multitude of useless endeavours I begin to
persuade myself that it is a superfluous trouble to strive to free
myself; and that it is sufficient wisdom to conceal from all but you how
confused and weak I am. I remove to a distance from your person with an
intention of avoiding you as an enemy; and yet I incessantly seek for
you in my mind; I recall your image in my memory, and in different
disquietudes I betray and contradict myself. I hate you! I love you! You
call me your master; it is true you were entrusted to my care. I saw
you, I was earnest to teach you; it cost you your innocence and me my
liberty. If now, having lost the power of satisfying my passion, I had
also lost that of loving you, I should have some consolation. But I find
myself much more guilty in my thoughts of you, even amidst my tears,
than in possessing you when I was in full liberty. I continually think
of you; I continually call to mind your tenderness."
He explains some of the means he has tried to make himself forget. He
has tried several fasts, and redoubled studies, and exhausted his
strength in constant exercises, but all to no purpose. "Oh, do not," he
exclaims, "add to my miseries by your constancy. Forget, if you can,
your favours and that right which they claim over me; allow me to be
indifferent. Why use your eloquence to reproach me for my flight and for
my silence? Spare the recital of our assignations and your constant
exactness to them; without calling up such disturbing thoughts I have
enough to suffer. What great advantages would philosophy give us over
other men if, by studying it, we could learn to govern our passions?
What a troublesome employment is love!"
Then he tries to excuse himself for his original betrayal. "Those
charms, that beauty, that air, which I yet behold at this instant,
occasioned my fall. Your looks were the beginning of my guilt; your
eyes, your discourse, pierced my heart; and, in spite of that ambition
and glory which tried to make a defence, love was soon the master." Even
now "my love burns fiercer amidst the happy indifference of those who
surround me. The Gospel is a language I do not understand when it
opposes my passion. Void of all relish for virtue, without concern for
my condition and without application to my studies, I am continually
present by my imagination where I ought not to be, and I find I have no
power to correct myself." He advises her to give up her mind to her holy
vocation as a means of forgetting him. "Make yourself amends by so
glorious a choice; make your virtue a spectacle worthy of men and
angels. Drink of the chalice of saints, even to the bottom, without
turning your eyes with uncertainty upon me. To forget Heloise, to see
her no more, is what Heaven demands of Abelard; and to expect nothing
from Abelard, to forget him even as an idea, is what Heaven enjoins on
Heloise."
He acknowledges that he made her take the veil for his own selfish
reasons, but is now bound to admit that "God rejected my offering and my
prayer, and continued my punishment by suffering me to continue my love.
Thus I bear alike the guilt of your vows and of the passion that
preceded them, and must be tormented all the days of my life." Once more
he adjures her to deliver herself from the "shameful remains" of a
passion which has taken too deep root. "To love Heloise truly," he
closes, "is to leave her to that quiet which retirement and virtue
afford. I have resolved it: this letter shall be my last fault. Adieu! I
hope you will be willing, when you have finished this mortal life, to be
buried near me. Your cold ashes need then fear nothing, and my tomb
shall be more rich and renowned."
_III.--Héloïse to Abélard_
The passion of Heloise is only inflamed by this letter from Abelard. She
has got him to write, and now she wants to see him and to hear more
about him. She cynically remarks that he has made greater advances in
the way of devotion than she could wish. There, alas! she is too weak to
follow him. But she must have his advice and spiritual comfort. "Can you
have the cruelty to abandon me? The fear of this stabs my heart." She
reproaches him for the "fearful presages" of death he had made in his
letter. And as regards his wish that she should take care of his
remains, she says: "Heaven, severe as it has been to me, is not so
insensible as to permit me to live one moment after you. Life without
Abelard were an insupportable punishment, and death a most exquisite
happiness if by that means I could be united to him. If Heaven but
hearken to my continual cry, your days will be prolonged and you will
bury me." It is his part, she says, to prepare _her_ for the great
crisis, to receive her last sighs. What could she hope for if _he_ were
taken away? "I have renounced without difficulty all the charms of life,
preserving only my love, and the secret pleasure of thinking incessantly
of you and hearing that you live. Dear Abelard, pity my despair! The
higher you raised me above other women, who envied me your love, the
more sensible am I now of the loss of your heart. I was exalted to the
top of happiness only that I might have the more terrible fall. Nothing
could be compared to my pleasures, and now nothing can equal my misery."
She blames herself entirely for Abelard's present position. "I, wretched
I, have ruined you, and have been the cause of all your misfortunes. How
dangerous it is for a great man to suffer himself to be moved by our
sex! He ought from his infancy to be inured to insensibility of heart
against all our charms. I have long examined things, and have found that
death is less dangerous than beauty. It is the shipwreck of liberty, a
fatal snare, from which it is impossible ever to get free."
She protests that she cannot forget. "Even into holy places before the
altar I carry the memory of our love; and, far from lamenting for having
been seduced by pleasures, I sigh for having lost them." She counts
herself more to be pitied than Abelard, because grace and misfortune
have helped him, whereas she has still her relentless passions to fight.
"Our sex is nothing but weakness, and I have the greater difficulty in
defending myself, because the enemy that attacks me pleases me. I doat
on the danger which threatens. How, then, can I avoid yielding? I seek
not to conquer for fear I should be overcome; happiness enough for me to
escape shipwreck and at last reach port. Heaven commands me to renounce
my fatal passion for you; but, oh! my heart will never be able to
consent to it. Adieu."
_IV.--Héloïse to Abelard_
Abelard has not replied to this letter, and Heloise begins by
sarcastically thanking him for his neglect. She pretends to have subdued
her passion, and, addressing him rather as priest than lover, demands
his spiritual counsel. Thus caustically does she proclaim her
inconstancy. "At last, Abelard, you have lost Heloise for ever.
Notwithstanding all the oaths I made to think of nothing but you, and to
be entertained by nothing but you, I have banished you from my thoughts;
I have forgot you. Thou charming idea of a lover I once adored, thou
wilt be no more my happiness! Dear image of Abelard! thou wilt no longer
follow me, no longer shall I remember thee. Oh, enchanting pleasures to
which Heloise resigned herself--you, you have been my tormentors! I
confess my inconstancy, Abelard, without a blush; let my infidelity
teach the world that there is no depending on the promises of women--we
are all subject to change. When I tell you what Rival hath ravished my
heart from you, you will praise my inconstancy, and pray this Rival to
fix it. By this you will know that 'tis God alone that takes Heloise
from you."
She explains how she arrived at this decision by being brought to the
gates of death by a dangerous illness. Her passion now seemed criminal.
She has therefore torn off the bandages which blinded her, and "you are
to me no longer the loving Abelard who constantly sought private
conversations with me by deceiving the vigilance of our observers." She
enlarges on her resolution. She will "no more endeavour, by the relation
of those pleasures our passion gave us, to awaken any guilty fondness
you may yet feel for me. I demand nothing of you but spiritual advice
and wholesome discipline. You cannot now be silent without a crime. When
I was possessed with so violent a love, and pressed you so earnestly to
write to me, how many letters did I send you before I could obtain one
from you?"
But, alas! her woman's weakness conquers again. For the moment she
forgets her resolution, and exclaims: "My dear husband (for the last
time I use that title!), shall I never see you again? Shall I never have
the pleasure of embracing you before death? What dost thou say, wretched
Heloise? Dost thou know what thou desirest? Couldst thou behold those
brilliant eyes without recalling the tender glances which have been so
fatal to thee? Couldst thou see that majestic air of Abelard without
being jealous of everyone who beholds so attractive a man? That mouth
cannot be looked upon without desire; in short, no woman can view the
person of Abelard without danger. Ask no more to see Abelard; if the
memory of him has caused thee so much trouble, Heloise, what would not
his presence do? What desires will it not excite in thy soul? How will
it be possible to keep thy reason at the sight of so lovable a man?"
She reverts to her delightful dreams about Abelard, when "you press me
to you and I yield to you, and our souls, animated with the same
passion, are sensible of the same pleasures." Then she recalls her
resolution, and closes with these words: "I begin to perceive that I
take too much pleasure in writing to you; I ought to burn this letter.
It shows that I still feel a deep passion for you, though at the
beginning I tried to persuade you to the contrary. I am sensible of
waves both of grace and passion, and by turns yield to each. Have pity,
Abelard, on the condition to which you have brought me, and make in some
measure my last days as peaceful as my first have been uneasy and
disturbed."
_V.--Abélard to Héloïse_
Abelard remains firm. "Write no more to me, Heloise, write no more to
me; 'tis time to end communications which make our penances of no
avail," he says. "Let us no more deceive ourselves with remembrance of
our past pleasures; we but make our lives troubled and spoil the sweets
of solitude. Let us make good use of our austerities, and no longer
preserve the memories of our crimes amongst the severities of penance.
Let a mortification of body and mind, a strict fasting, continual
solitude, profound and holy meditations, and a sincere love of God
succeed our former irregularities."
Both, he deplores, are still very far from this enviable state. "Your
heart still burns with that fatal fire you cannot extinguish, and mine
is full of trouble and unrest. Think not, Heloise, that I here enjoy a
perfect peace; I will for the last time open my heart to you; I am not
yet disengaged from you, and though I fight against my excessive
tenderness for you, in spite of all my endeavours I remain but too
sensible of your sorrows, and long to share in them. The world, which is
generally wrong in its notions, thinks I am at peace, and imagining that
I loved you only for the gratification of the senses, have now forgot
you. What a mistake is this!"
He exhorts her to strive, to be more firm in her resolutions, to "break
those shameful chains which bind you to the flesh." He pictures the
death of a saint and he works upon her fears by impressing upon her the
terrors of hell. His last recorded words to her are these:
"I question not, Heloise, but you will hereafter apply yourself in good
earnest to the business of your salvation; this ought to be your whole
concern. Banish me, therefore, for ever from your heart--it is the best
advice I can give you, for the remembrance of a person we have loved
guiltily cannot but be hurtful, whatever advances we may have made in
the way of virtue. When you have extirpated your unhappy inclination
towards me, the practice of every virtue will become easy; and when at
last your life is conformable to that of Christ, death will be desirable
to you. Your soul will joyfully leave this body, and direct its flight
to heaven. Then you will appear with confidence before your Saviour; you
will not read your reprobation in the Judgement Book, but you will hear
your Saviour say: 'Come, partake of My glory, and enjoy the eternal
reward I have appointed for those virtues you have practised.'
"Farewell, Heloise, this is the last advice of your dear Abelard; for
the last time let me persuade you to follow the rules of the Gospel.
Heaven grant that your heart, once so sensible of my love, may now yield
to be directed by my zeal. May the idea of your loving Abelard, always
present to your mind, be now changed into the image of Abelard truly and
sincerely penitent; and may you shed as many tears for your salvation as
you have done for our misfortunes."
Then the silence falls for ever.
* * * * *