Abélard has left us a dramatic picture of her taking the vows. It shows clearly that the love which impelled her to such a sacrifice was not the blind, child-like affection that is wholly merged in the stronger loved one, but the deep, true love that sees the full extent of the sacrifice demanded, and accepts it with wide-opened eyes. At the last moment a little group of friends surrounded her in the convent-chapel. The veil, blessed by the bishop, lay on the altar before them, and they were endeavouring to dissuade her from going forward to take it. She waved them aside—waved aside for the last time the thought of her child and the vision of a sun-lit earth—and took the fateful step towards the altar. Then, standing on the spot where the young nun generally knelt for the final thanksgiving to God, she recited with the tense fervour of a human prayer the words of Cornelia in Lucan: ‘O spouse most great, O thou whose bed my merit could not share! How hath an evil fortune worked this wrong On thy dear head? Why hapless did I wed, If this the fruit that my affection bore? Behold the penalty I now embrace For thy sweet sake!’ And, weeping and sobbing, she walked quickly up the steps of the altar, and covered herself with the veil of the religious profession. CHAPTER VI THE MONK OF ST. DENIS Abélard had now entered upon the series of blunders which were to make his life a succession of catastrophes. A stronger man would have retired to Pallet, and remained there until the discussion of his outrage had abated somewhat; then boldly, and, most probably, with complete success, have confronted the scholastic world once more, with his wife for fitting companion, like Manegold of Alsace. In his distraction and abnormal sense of humiliation, Abélard grasped the plausible promise of the monastic life. In the second place, he, with a peculiar blindness, chose the abbey of St. Denis for his home. The abbey of St. Denis was not only one of the most famous monasteries in Europe, but also a semi-religious, semi-secular monarchical institution. It was the last monastery in the world to provide that quiet seclusion which Abélard sought. It lay about six miles from Paris, near one of the many bends of the Seine on its journey to the sea. Dagobert was its royal founder; its church was built over the alleged bones of the alleged St. Denis the Areopagite, the patron of France; it was the burial-place of the royal house. Over its altar hung the oriflamme of St. Denis, the palladium of the country, which the king came to seek, with solemn rite and procession, whenever the cry of ‘St. Denis for France’ rang through the kingdom. Amongst its several hundred monks were the physicians and the tutors of kings—Prince Louis of France was even then studying in its school.