“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.