Let us leave Héloïse for the present and pursue the story of Abélard. His troubles were just beginning; henceforth almost everything seemed to go wrong with him. Scarcely recovered from his injuries, he was besought by his former pupils to resume his lectures, while the monks of Saint-Denis, thinking to gain credit through their illustrious recruit, also urged him to teach again. These same monks Abélard had found far from congenial. They were covetous, narrow-minded, and outrageously licentious. He was, therefore, the more willing to undertake his old work, and opened a modest school at the little village of Maisoncelle, in Brie, where the monks of Saint-Denis had a priory. Here, once more, crowds came to hear him, and he felt so encouraged that he ventured to put in book form some of his theological and philosophical opinions, at the instance and for the use of his students. Neither misfortune nor the wish of Job that his adversary had written a book had taught him caution; in his book, probably the _Introductio ad Theologiam_ that has come down to us, he ventured to discuss even the most obscure and jealously guarded mysteries of the faith, and to discuss them with the same lucidity, directness, and acuteness of reason that had made him famous as a lecturer. He was, indeed, in the habit of acting upon one of the phrases which one may cull from his writings as characteristic of the man's mental attitude: "Understand, that you may believe." Abélard found, like hundreds of others who have proceeded in this way, that his reason could not account, to its own satisfaction, for all the things called of faith. He was constantly allowing himself to be led on in discussion until he found himself confronted with a dilemma: either to follow logic still further and end in infidelity, or to silence, as best he could, the voice of reason by an appeal to authority and to faith. On the present occasion it was an utterance on the dogma of the Trinity that his enemies seized upon. The leaders of the persecution were two former classmates, who now intrigued against him. Without examining him, without giving him a chance to discuss, justify, or explain his doctrine, a council, assembled at Soissons in 1121, condemned his book, not so much for what it taught, as because the author had presumed to teach theology without definite authority from the Church. Summoned before the council--the decision had been reached and the trial conducted without his presence--Abélard was forced to throw his book into the flames. As a confession of faith he was made to recite the Athanasian creed, and, to humiliate him still further, they brought him the text, as if he could not recite from memory that which was known by every child. The man's overwrought nature gave way under this last exhibition of petty malice. He tells us: "I read (the creed) as well as I could for sobs and tears." He was then delivered to the abbot of