But though Abélard lacked neither wealth, nor honour, nor home, he speaks of his condition as a very pitiable one. Deutsch has hazarded the conjecture that the monks of St. Gildas really desired an abbot who would be generally absent. It seems rather that they wanted an abbot who would share their comfortable theory of life and at the same time have influence to enrich the abbey, discontinue the paying of tribute, and induce a higher authority to restrain their tyrannical neighbours. They were therefore naturally inflamed when Abélard deserted the immediate concerns of the abbey, yet remained near enough to secure his revenue out of its income. He retained his title (we find no successor appointed until after his death), and as he speaks of wealth, we must suppose that he somehow continued to obtain his income. The Count of Nantes would probably support his cause as long as he remained in Brittany. But, at the same time, this detained him in the constant danger of assassination. Wherever he went, he apprehended bribery and corruption, poison and poniards. ‘My misery grew with my wealth,’ he says, and ‘I find no place where I may rest or live.’ His classical reading promptly suggests the parallel of Damocles. It was in these circumstances that Abélard wrote the famous letter which he entitled the ‘Story of my Calamities.’ The passage I have just quoted occurs in its closing paragraph. It is an invaluable document for the purpose of the great master’s biography. Without it, the life of Abélard would occupy only a score of pages. His contemporaries had numbers of monastic followers and admirers who were eager to write their deeds in letters of gold. The little band of friends who stood around Abélard in his final struggle were scattered, cowed, or murdered, by triumphant Bernardism. At the mention of Bernard’s name Christendom crossed itself and raised its eyes to the clouds: at the mention of the ‘Peripatetic of Pallet’ it closed its pious lips, forgetful, or ignorant, of the twenty years of profound sorrow for the one grave delinquency of his life. If the sins of youth are to leave an indelible stain, one is forced to recall that Augustine had been a greater sinner, and that the Canon of the Church contains the names of converted prostitutes, such as Mary of Magdala and Mary Magdalene of Pazzi. It may be thought by some Catholics that, in the uncertainty of human judgment, there is a providential criterion given in the working of miracles; but, once more, even the fifth century only credited St. Augustine with two miracles. And if intention to serve the Church be all-important, Abélard has won high merit; or if effective service to the Church, then is his merit the greater, for the thirteenth century, in its construction of that theology and philosophy which the Church even now deems sufficient for the needs of the world, utterly rejected Bernardism, and borrowed its foundation from Pierre Abélard.