Pope Innocent II. confirmed this gift in 1131. Abelard speaks further, in his _Historia Calamitatum_, of events befalling a year later, and of his return to the abbey of St. Gildas. We see therefore that this memoir, written with much care and attention, cannot have been published before 1133, and perhaps even long after that. Abelard was then in his fifty-fourth year and Eloisa in her thirty-second or thirty-third. About fourteen years had elapsed since both had embraced the monastic life: in the meanwhile they had met and had spent more or less time together in the Paraclete between 1129 and 1132. Let us now enquire if the subject matter contained in these seven letters, all of which were written after the latter date (a fact that should be carefully noted) agrees with that which has preceded. The amorous correspondence of the lovers is confined to four letters. The first is written by Eloisa. She says, that if she writes to Abelard at all, it is that she has by accident seen the _Historia Calamitatum_; and in order to convince him that she has read it, she touches briefly on each circumstance recorded in it, every one of which must have been only too familiar to them both. Does the reader think this a natural or a probable style of commencement? Does it not denote something artificial in the composition? Farther on she complains that Abelard has forsaken her: “her to whom the name of mistress was dearer than that of wife, however sacred this latter tie might be.”[24] And finally she adds: “Only tell me if you can, why, since we have taken the monastic vows, which you alone desired, you have so neglected and forgotten me that I have neither been blessed by your presence nor consoled by a single letter in your absence. Answer me, I beseech you, if you can, or I may myself be tempted to tell you what I think, and what all the world suspects.”[25] This letter, full of passionate reproach, contains contradictions and improbabilities perceptible to all who have read that which has preceded. Let us first call attention to the style, which is hardly to be explained. The passionate expressions of Eloisa would have been quite natural in the first years that followed her separation from Abelard, but fourteen years had elapsed--fourteen years of monastic life to both one and the other.