The great cemetery of Père Lachaise at Paris is a city of historic tombs. Names of world-fame look down on you from the marble dwellings of the dead, as you pass along its alleys and broad avenues. Paris loves to wander there on Sundays; to scatter floral symbols of a living memory on the youngest graves, and to hang wreaths of unfading honour over the ashes of those who have fought for it and served it. The memory of the dead soon fades, they say, yet you will see men and women of Paris, on many a summer’s day, take flowers and wreaths in solemn pity to lay on the tomb of a woman who was dust seven hundred years ago. It is the grave of Heloise, and of her lover, Abélard. It is scarcely necessary to say that in a serious endeavour to depict the historical Heloise much myth and legend must be soberly declined. Even historians have been seduced from their high duty in writing her praise: witness the fond exaggeration of M. de Rémusat, which would make her ‘the first of women.’ Yet it must be admitted that impartial study brings us face to face with a very remarkable personality. This will be easily accepted in the sequel, when we have followed the course of her life to some extent—when, for instance, we see the affection and the extraordinary respect with which she inspires the famous abbot of Cluny, Peter the Venerable. It is more difficult to recall her at the period of her fateful meeting with Abélard. We have, however, the sober assurance of Peter the Venerable that, even at this early date, she was ‘of great repute throughout the entire kingdom’; and there is no reason whatever to resent Abélard’s assertion that she was already distinguished for her knowledge.