Alberic and Lotulphe were, on reflection, dissatisfied with the result. Their influence would have no weight in a trial at Paris, and their ambition required the sacrifice of the famous master. They therefore went to the archbishop with a complaint that people would take it to be a confession of incompetency if he allowed the case to go before another court. The three approached the legate again, and now reminded him that Abélard’s work was published without episcopal permission, and could justly be condemned on that ground. As ignorant of canon law as he was of theology, and seeing the apparent friendlessness of Abélard, and therefore the security of a condemnation, Conon agreed to their proposal. Abélard had long looked forward to the hour of his appearance before the Council. It was to be an hour of supreme triumph. The papal legate and the archbishop in their resplendent robes in the sanctuary; the circle of bishops and abbots and canons; the crowd of priests, theologians, masters, and clerics; the solemn pulpit of the cathedral church, from which he should make his highest effort of dialectics and oratory; the scattered rivals, and the triumphant return to his pupils. He had rehearsed it daily for a month or more. But the sad, heart-rending reality of his appearance! He was brought in, condemned. He stood in the midst of the thronged cathedral, with the brand of heresy on his brow, he, the intellectual and moral master of them all. A fire was kindled there before the Council. There was no need for Geoffrey of Chartres to come, the tears coursing down his cheeks, to tell him his book was judged and condemned. Quietly, but with a fierce accusation of God Himself in his broken heart, as he afterwards said, he cast his treasured work in the flames. Even in that awful moment the spirit of comedy must needs assert its mocking presence; or is it only part of the tragedy? Whilst the yellow parchment crackled in the flames, some one who stood by the legate muttered that one passage in it said that God the Father alone was omnipotent. Soulless politician as he was, the ignorant legate fastened on the charge as a confirmation of the justice of his sentence. ‘I could scarcely believe that even a child would fall into such an error,’ said the brute, with an affectation of academic dignity. ‘And yet,’ a sarcastic voice fell on his ear, quoting the Athanasian Creed, ‘and yet there are not Three omnipotent, but One.’ The bold speaker was Tirric, the Breton scholastic, who, as we have seen, probably instructed Abélard in mathematics. His bishop immediately began to censure him for his neat exhibition of the legate’s ignorance, but the teacher was determined to express his disgust at the proceedings. ‘You have condemned a child of Israel,’ he cried, lashing the ‘conventicle’ with the scornful words of Daniel, ‘without inquiry or certainty. Return ye to the judgment seat, and judge the judges.’