And this is all the evidence which can be found in support of the calumny. On the strength of this monkish gossip we are asked to believe that Abélard grossly deceived his young wife, and made an attempt, as ridiculous (if the rumour contained truth) as it was hypocritical, to deceive the readers of his heart-naked confession. We are to suppose that ‘the abhorrence of harlots,’ of which he spoke earlier, entirely disappeared when he found himself united by the sacred bonds of both religion and love to a noble and devoted wife. We are to suppose that his apparent detestation and condemnation of his past conduct was a mere rhetorical artifice to conceal the foulest and most extraordinary episode in his career from the people amongst whom he had lived—an artifice, moreover, which would be utterly inconsistent with his life and character at the time he wrote the ‘Story.’ It is almost impossible to take such a notion seriously. Once more, then, we are in a period of waiting for the direction of events. It came this time in tragic accents that for ever cured the unfortunate Breton of his listless trust in fate. Fulbert learned at length that Heloise had been sent to Argenteuil, and had taken the habit. The canon at once inferred that this was a preliminary step to a dissolution of the marriage. He would be unaware that it had been consummated, and would suppose that Abélard intended to apply to Rome for a dispensation to relieve him of an apparent embarrassment. He decided on a fearful revenge, which should at least prevent Abélard from marrying another. And one early morning, a little later, Paris was in a frenzy of excitement. Canons, students, and citizens, thronged the streets, and pressed towards Abélard’s house on St. Genevieve. ‘Almost the entire city,’ says Fulques, went clamouring towards his house: ‘women wept as though each one had lost her husband.’ Abélard had been brutally mutilated during the night. Hirelings of Canon Fulbert had corrupted his valet, and entered his room whilst he slept. They had perpetrated an indescribable outrage, such as was not infrequently inflicted in the quarrels of the Patareni and the Nicolaitæ. In that dark night the sunshine disappeared for ever from the life of Pierre Abélard. Henceforth we have to deal with a new man. It is a pious theory of the autobiographist himself that this mutilation led indirectly to his ‘conversion.’ There is undoubtedly much truth in this notion of an indirect occasioning of better thoughts and of an indirect influence being cast on his mind for life. Yet we of the later date, holding a truer view of the unity of human nature, and of the place that sex-influence occupies in its life, can see that the ‘conversion’ was largely a direct, physical process. We have, in a very literal sense, another man to deal with henceforward.