Years afterwards the brothers used to point out to visitors—for Abélard had left a repute for sanctity behind him—a great lime-tree under which he used to sit and read between exercises. Peter had gone so far as to make him prior of the studies of the brethren, so lightly did he hold the charge of heresy. The abbot has given us, in a later letter to Heloise, an enthusiastic picture, drawn from the purely Buddhist point of view, of Abélard’s closing days. With a vague allusion to this letter certain ecclesiastical writers represent Abélard as a sinner up to the time of the Council of Sens, and a convert and penitent in the brief subsequent period. In point of fact there was little change in the soul of the fallen man, beyond a weary resignation of his hope of cleansing the Church, involving, as this did, a more constant preoccupation with the world to come. The abbot says, in support of his declaration, that Abélard had cast a radiance on their abbey, that ‘not a moment passed but he was either praying or reading or writing or composing’; and again: ‘If I mistake not I never saw his equal in lowliness of habit and conduct, so much so that Germain did not seem more humble nor Martin poorer than he to those who were of good discernment.’ The ‘good discernment’ reminds us that we must not take at too literal a value this letter of comfort to the widowed abbess. Abélard had been an ascetic and a devout man since his frightful experience at Paris twenty-five years previously. With the fading of his interest in the things of earth, and in his sure consciousness of approaching death, his prayers would assuredly be longer and his indifference to comfort and honour more pronounced.