How long this wretched situation continued it is impossible to determine. It cannot have been many months, at the most, before Fulbert discovered what had happened; it was probably a matter of weeks. Yet this is the only period in which it is possible to entertain the theory of Abélard’s licentiousness. We have already seen that Cotter Morison’s notion of a licentious period before the liaison with Heloise is quite indefensible. The tragic event which we have presently to relate puts the latest term to the possibility of such licence. Now, there are two documents on which Abélard’s critics rely: a letter to him from Fulques, prior in the monastery of Deuil near Paris, and a letter from his former teacher, Master Roscelin. Prior Fulques, however, merely says he ‘has heard’ that Abélard was reduced to poverty through ‘the greed and avarice of harlots’; and Roscelin explicitly states that he heard his story from the monks of St. Denis. Indeed, we may at once exclude Roscelin’s letter; not merely because it was written in a most furious outburst of temper, when a man would grasp any rumour, but also on the ground that his story is absurd and impossible. He represents Abélard, when a monk at St. Denis, later, returning to his monastery with the money earned by his teaching, and marching off with it to pay a former mistress. We shall see, in a later chapter, that Abélard did not begin to teach until he had left St. Denis. If, however, Roscelin’s story is too absurd to entertain in itself, it is useful in casting some light on Fulques’s letter. Fulques was writing to Abélard on behalf of the monks of St. Denis. He would be well acquainted with their gossip, and would, therefore, probably be referring to the story which Roscelin shows to be impossible in giving it more fully. It is not unlikely that the story was really a perverse account of Abélard’s visits to Heloise at Argenteuil. In any case we are reduced to the gossip of a band of monks of notorious character (_teste_ St. Bernard), of indirect and uncertain information, and of bitter hostility to Abélard.