Abélard had no great love for this Dionysiac existence, and he resolved to make a bold effort at reform. He summoned the monks in solemn chapter, and hurled the sentence of excommunication at the leaders of the revolt. It sat more lightly on their shoulders than the abbot anticipated, and he proceeded to call in the help of a papal legate. The Duke of Brittany and several neighbouring bishops were invited to the function, and the sentence of excommunication and expulsion from the abbey was repeated with impressive ceremony. The chief rebels were thus restricted to following the abbot’s movements without—in company, apparently, of the hired assassins of the monks and the equally dangerous servants of the lord of the manor—and Abélard devoted his attention to reforming the remainder of the community. But the old abbey was past redemption. ‘The remaining monks began to talk, not of poison, but of cutting my throat,’ he says. The circle of knives was drawing closer upon him, within and without, and he saw that it would be impossible to guard his life much longer. He gave up the struggle, and fled from the abbey. There is a local tradition which tells of a secret flight by night through a subterranean passage leading down to the sea. Abélard at least intimates there was little dignity in his retirement, when he says: ‘under the guidance of a certain noble of the district I succeeded, with great difficulty, in escaping from the abbey.’ Where Abélard found refuge from his murderous ‘sons,’ and where he spent the next three or four years, it is difficult to say. He probably moved from place to place, generally remaining in the neighbourhood of Rhuys, but occasionally journeying to Champagne or accepting an invitation to preach at some special festival. The ‘certain noble’—an uncertain one, as the phrase usually implies—would be likely to give him immediate hospitality; and the Count of Nantes was friendly, and would find Abélard a graceful addition at his board. Then there was the family château at Pallet, and the house of his brother Dagobert at Nantes. We seem to find Abélard’s boy, Astrolabe, under the care of this brother later on. Abélard would at all events see much of him, and assist in educating him, either at Pallet or Nantes. The son had, apparently, not inherited the gifts of his parents. An obscure mention of his death in a later _necrologium_ merely indicates the close of a correct but ordinary ecclesiastical career.