Abélard tells us that he remained ‘for several years almost cut off from France.’ Rémusat thinks it was probably during this period that he studied under Roscelin, but there is now little room for doubt that his intercourse with the famous nominalist falls in the earlier years. Much more probable is it that we should assign his relations to Tirric of Chartres to the later date. The substance of the anecdote that was found on the margin of the Ratisbon manuscript seems to accord admirably with Abélard’s circumstances in the period we have now reached. The question, however, will interest few, beyond the narrow circle of historical specialists. He himself is silent about the few years of rest in the Breton castle, merely stating that he returned to Paris when he had recovered his health. We have to remember that the autobiography he has left us was entitled by him the ‘Story of my Calamities.’ It is not the full presentment of the swiftly moving drama of the life of Abélard. He speaks of joy only when it is the prelude to sorrow, or when some faint spark of the old ardour leaps into life once more. When Abélard at length returned to the arena, he found a significant change. William had deserted the cloistral school. In a solitary spot down the river, beyond the foot of the eastern slope of St. Genevieve, was a small priory that had belonged to the monks of St. Victor of Marseilles. Thither, says Franklin, William had retired ‘to hide his despair and the shame of his defeat.’ The controversy had by no means been decided against him yet. Indeed, William’s biographers loyally contend that he was sincerely touched by the religious spirit of the age, and adopted the monastic life from the purest of motives. Abélard, on the other hand, declares that the inspiration came from a hope of exchanging the chair of Notre Dame for that of an episcopal see. Abélard is scarcely an ideal witness, though the passage was written nearly thirty years afterwards, yet his interpretation is probably correct; at least, if we take it as a partial explanation. William was shrewd enough to see that his supremacy in the scholastic world was doomed, and that the best alternative was a bishopric. He was still young (about thirty-eight, apparently) and ambitious; in his character of archdeacon, he was already only one step removed from the episcopate; and he had influence and qualifications above the average. It is scarcely correct to say, as Gervaise does, that at that time ‘the monastery was the recognised path to the episcopacy,’ on account of the wide degradation of the secular clergy. Their degradation was assuredly deep and widespread, but so were simony and electoral corruption. We generally find, in the old chronicles, one or other of the deceased bishop’s archdeacons ascending the vacant throne. However, William of Champeaux was a religious man; for the pious the surest path to the episcopate passed through the monastery.