Abélard had now arrived at a point when the mental strain began instinctively to relax. Wealth would inevitably bring more sensuous pleasure into his life. He was not one of the ‘purely intellectual’; he had a warm imagination and artistic power. No immediate purpose called for mental concentration. Sensuous enjoyment crept over the area of his conscious life. During a large proportion of his time, too, he was following with sympathy the quickening life of the passionate creations of Ovid and Vergil and Lucan. The inner judge, the sterner I, is indisposed to analyse, unless education, or faith, or circumstance, has laid a duty of severer watchfulness upon it. Blending with other and not alarming sensuous feelings, veiling itself, and gently, subtly passing its sweet fire into the veins, the coming of love is unperceived until it is already strong to exert a numbing influence on the mind. Abélard awoke one day to a consciousness that a large part of the new sweetness that pervaded his life was due to the birth of a new power in his soul—a power as elusive to recognition as it is imperious in its demands. Then is the trial of the soul. Before quoting Abélard’s confession, with respect to this transformation of his character, it is necessary, out of justice to him, to anticipate a little, in indicating the circumstances of the making of the confession. The long letter which Abélard entitled the ‘Story of my Calamities’ was written twelve or thirteen years after these events. By that time he had not only endured a succession of cruel persecutions, but his outlook on life and on self had been entirely changed. Not only had the memory of the events faded somewhat, but he had become colour-blind in an important sense. A frightful mutilation had distorted his physical and psychic nature. Partly from this cause, and partly under the stress of other circumstances, he had become a Puritan of the Puritans, an ascetical hermit. As is the wont of such, he manifests a tendency to exaggerate the shadows cast by actions of his which he can no longer understand; for nature has withdrawn her inspiration. On the point we are considering he does not evince the smallest desire of concealment or palliation, but rather the reverse. And, finally, the letter, though written ostensibly for the solace of a friend in distress, was clearly written for circulation, and for the conciliation of the gentler of the Puritans, who knew his life well.