There is no memory more popular in France than that of Abelard’s mistress. The fall of the man made the grandeur of the woman; but for Abelard’s misfortune, Héloïse would have been unknown; she would have remained obscure and in the shade, she would have desired no other glory than that of her spouse. At the period of their separation, he made her take the veil, and built for her the Paraclet, of which she became the abbess. There she held a great school of theology, Greek, and Hebrew. Many similar monasteries rose around the Paraclet, and some years after the death of Abelard, Héloïse was declared head of an order by the pope. But her glory consists in her love, so constant and so disinterested--a love to which Abelard’s coldness and hardness of heart give a new lustre. Let us compare the language of the two lovers: “Fulbert,” says Abelard, “gave her up, without reserve, to my control, so that, upon my return from the schools, I should apply myself to her instruction, and, if I found her negligent, should chastise her severely. Was not this giving full license to my desires, so that, if I did not succeed by caresses, I might compass my end by threats and blows?” This dastardly brutality of a pedant of the twelfth century is in strange contrast with the exalted and disinterested sentiments expressed by Héloïse. “God knows, in thee, I sought but thee; nothing of thee but thyself; such was the sole object of my desire. I was ambitious of no advantage, not even of the bond of wedlock; I thought not, thou well knowest, of satisfying either my own wishes or my own pleasure, but thine. If the name of spouse is more holy, sweeter to me seemed that of thy mistress, that (be not angry) of thy concubine (_concubinæ vel seorti_). The more I humbled myself for thee, the more I hoped to gain in thy heart. Yes, though the master of the world, though the emperor had been willing to honour me with the name of his spouse, I would rather have been called thy mistress than his wife and his empress (_tua dici meretrix, quàm illius imperatrix_).” She accounts in a singular manner for her having long refused to be the wife of Abelard: “Would it not have been an unseemly, a deplorable thing, that one woman should appropriate and take for herself alone, him whom nature had created for all mankind? What mind, intent upon the meditations of philosophy or of sacred things, could endure the crying of children, the prating of nurses, the disturbance and tumult of serving-men and women?”