“Brave as Socrates, Abelard returned to the Abbey of Saint Denis, there to raise the first historic doubt. He did not think Saint Denis was the Areopagite of the Scriptures, nor did he believe the saint was ever in Paris. The horrified Abbot accordingly gave Abelard over to the civil authorities ‘for reflections upon the kingdom and the crown.’ “Driven from Paris, he retired to a cloistered order at Troyes, where he built a church and had the pleasure of dedicating it to the Holy Ghost (there being a law against dedicating a temple to the Paraclete). Arguing to the last, Abelard passed away, and while his body was mouldering in the ground, his soul went arguing on in his intellectual descendants, the mediæval schoolmen who, in their poor way, managed to awaken the mind of Europe, if only to lead it by labyrinths into a cul-de-sac. “I wonder if Heloise was able to follow her true love’s valiant career without earthly pride? Or by some strange austere resolve did she deny herself that gentle pleasure? For Heloise belongs to the species, omnipotent woman, who carries out her decisions by hook or by crook for the benefit of self and others, never hampered by a doubt of the ultimate excellence of her arrangements. “Did she do well not to rob the Church of Abelard? Perhaps she builded better than she knew, or she may have made a sad mistake, but God knows, she did her best. That was eight hundred years ago, but her story is tragic today. As to Abelard’s, it is really very interesting. “And,” continues History, “the favorite romance of this sadly submissive age was ‘The Patient Griselda.’ It was an old, old tale when Boccaccio told it, but, thank fortune, it is dead at last, for we cannot now conceive of the excellence of the heroine. “A marquis, whose only love is the chase, is forced by his subjects to marry. He compromises on a little country girl, and requires her to promise ‘to study to please him and not to be uneasy at anything whatever he may do or say.’ (A man’s requirements, only this marquis wasn’t a gentleman.) To test her patience, he amuses himself by taking her children from her, one by one, and leading her to suppose that they have been killed, because his people objected to the descendants of a peasant. Griselda blesses her children as she delivers them to his servitor, saying: “‘Take them; do what my lord and thine has commanded; but, prithee, leave them not to be devoured by fowls or wild beasts unless that be his will.’ “Then the marquis tells her he must annul their marriage.