It was well for Bernard’s cause that he succeeded in obtaining the decree without delay. He had carefully represented that the whole of France supported him in his demand. It does seem as if some of Abélard’s friends were puzzled for a time by his appeal, but before long there came a reaction in his favour, just as had happened after his condemnation at Soissons. Bernard himself may have been perfectly self-justified in his determined effort to prevent Abélard from having a fair chance of defending himself, but there are two ways of regarding his conduct.[35] Abélard’s followers naturally adopted the view which was less flattering to Bernard’s reputation, and they seem to have had some success in enforcing it. In a letter of Bernard’s to a certain cardinal we find him defending himself against the charge of ‘having obtained the decree by improper means [_subripere_] from the pope.’ [35] I abstain from commenting on St. Bernard’s conduct, or making the ethical and psychological analysis of it, which is so imperfectly done by his biographers at this period, because they do not fully state the facts, or not in their natural order. It would be a fascinating task, but one beside the purpose of the present work and not discreet for the present writer. I have let Bernard speak for himself. One of the chief instruments in the agitation on the Abélardist side was the apology of Bérenger of Poitiers, which we have quoted previously. Violent and coarse as it was, it was known to have a foundation of fact; and, in the growing unpopularity of Bernard, it had a wide circulation. It was not answered, as the Benedictines say; yet we may gather from Bérenger’s qualified withdrawal of it, when he is hard pressed, that it gave Bernard and the Cistercians a good deal of annoyance. Arnold of Brescia was, meanwhile, repeating his fulminations at Paris against the whole hierarchical system. He had taken Abélard’s late chair in the chapel of St. Hilary on the slope of St. Genevieve, and was sustaining the school until the master should return from Rome in triumph. But Arnold had no hope of any good being done at Rome, and rather preached rebellion against the whole of the bejewelled prelates. Sternly ascetic in his life and ideals—St. Bernard scoffingly applies to him the evangelical description of the Baptist: ‘He ate not, neither did he drink’—he was ever contrasting the luxurious life of the pastors of the Church with the simple ideal of early Christianity. He had not such success in France as elsewhere, and Bernard secured his expulsion a few years later. But the same stern denunciation was on his noble lips when the savage flames sealed them for ever, under the shadow of St. Peter’s, in 1155.