A tradition, which seems to have but a precarious claim to credence, points out the spot where the idyll of that love was lived. In the earlier part of the present century there was a house at the corner of the Rue des Chantres (on the island, facing the Hotel de Ville), which bore an inscription claiming that ‘Heloise and Abélard, the model of faithful spouses, dwelt in this house.’ If we accept the vague legend, we can easily restore in imagination the little cottage of Fulbert. It lay a few yards from the water’s edge, and one could look out from its narrow windows over the gently sloping garden of the bank and the fresh, sweet bosom of the river; the quays were beyond—where the Hotel de Ville now stands—and further still outspread the lovely panorama that encircled Paris. In a very short time master and pupil were lovers. He did assuredly fulfil his promise of teaching her. Most probably it was from him that she learned what Greek and Hebrew she knew; for Abélard, in later years, not only reminds her nuns that they ‘have a mother who is conversant with these tongues,’ but adds also that ‘she alone has attained this knowledge,’ amongst the women of her time. It is also clear that he taught her dialectics, theology, and ethics. But it was not long, he confesses, before there were ‘more kisses than theses,’ and ‘love was the inspirer of his tongue.’ He does not hesitate to speak of having ‘corrupted’ or seduced her, but it is only prejudice or ignorance that can accept this in the full severity and gravity of the modern term. Heloise had been educated in a nunnery; but before many years we find these nuns of Argenteuil turned on the street for ‘the enormity of their lives.’ The charge must not be taken too literally just yet, but it should make us hesitate to credit Heloise with a rigorous moral education. She lived, too, in a world where, as we saw, such liaisons were not considered sinful. It is far from likely that she would oppose any scruple to Abélard’s desire. Indeed, from the study of her references to their love, in the letters she wrote long years afterwards—wrote as an abbess of high repute—one feels disposed to think that Abélard would have had extreme difficulty in pointing out to her the sinfulness of such a love. It is with an effort, even after twenty years of chaste, conventual life, that she accepts the ecclesiastical view of their conduct. Abélard sinned; but let us, in justice, limit his sin at least to its due objective proportion; its subjective magnitude I shall not venture to examine.