As a semi-warlike but religious age produced a David, with his
strikingly double nature perpetually at war with itself and looking for
aid to God,--his "sun," his "shield," his hope, and joy,--so an equally
unenlightened but devout age produced a Héloïse, the impersonation of
sympathy, disinterestedness, suffering, forgiveness, and resignation. I
have already described this dark, sad, turbulent, superstitious,
ignorant period of strife and suffering, yet not without its poetic
charms and religious aspirations; when the convent and the castle were
its chief external features, and when a life of meditation was as marked
as a life of bodily activity, as if old age and youth were battling for
supremacy,--a very peculiar state of society, in which we see the
loftiest speculations of the intellect and the highest triumphs of faith
blended with puerile enterprises and misdirected physical forces.

In this semi-barbaric age Héloïse was born, about the year 1101. Nobody
knew who was her father, although it was surmised that he belonged to
the illustrious family of the Montmorencies, which traced an unbroken
lineage to Pharimond, before the time of Clovis. She lived with her
uncle Fulbert, an ignorant, worldly-wise old canon of the Cathedral
Church of Notre Dame in Paris. He called her his niece; but whether
niece, or daughter, or adopted child, was a mystery. She was of
extraordinary beauty, though remarkable for expression rather than for
regularity of feature. In intellect she was precocious and brilliant;
but the qualities of a great soul shone above the radiance of her wit.
She was bright, amiable, affectionate, and sympathetic,--the type of an
interesting woman. The ecclesiastic was justly proud of her, and gave to
her all the education the age afforded. Although not meaning to be a
nun, she was educated in a neighboring convent,--for convents, even in
those times, were female seminaries, containing many inmates who never