It was Abélard’s farewell to her who had shared so much of the joy and the bitterness of his life. But what a different man it recalls through the mists of time from the ‘dragon’ of Bernard’s letters! One contrast at least we cannot fail to note between the saint and the sinner. We have seen Bernard’s treatment of Abélard; in this private letter, evidently intended for no eye but that of his wife, we have the sole recorded utterance of Abélard on the man who, for so little reason, shattered the triumph and the peace of his closing years. For if there is a seeming peace about the few months of life that still remained to the great teacher, it is the peace of the grave—the heavy peace that shrouds a dead ambition and a broken spirit, not the glad peace that adorns requited labour and successful love. Abélard enters upon a third stage of his existence, and the shadow of the tomb is on it. He becomes a monk; he centres all his thought on the religious exercises that, like the turns of the prayer wheel, write the long catalogue of merit in heaven. In the abbey of Cluny, under the administration of Peter the Venerable, he found all that his soul desired in its final stage. The vast monastery had a community of four hundred and sixty monks. Older than its rival, Cîteaux, possessed of great wealth and one of the finest churches in France, it was eagerly sought by monastic aspirants. When Innocent II. came to France for support, Cluny sent sixty horses and mules to meet him, and entertained him and all his followers for eleven days. At an earlier date it had lodged pope, king, and emperor, with all their followers, without displacing a single monk. Yet with all its wealth and magnitude the abbey maintained a strict observance of the rule of St. Benedict. Peter was too cultured and humanistic[37] for the Cistercians, who often criticised the half-heartedness of his community. In point of fact a strict order and discipline were maintained in the abbey, and Abélard entered fervently into its life. From their beds of straw the monks would rise at midnight and proceed to the church, where they would chant their long, dirge-like matins, and remain in meditation until dawn. Work, study, and prayer filled up the long hours; and at night they would cast themselves down, just as they were, on the bags of straw, to rise again on the morrow for the same task. Such monks—they are rare now, though far from extinct—must be men of one idea—heaven. To that stage had Abélard sunk. [37] Amongst other humane modifications we may note that he raised the age of admission to the abbey to twenty-one.