intended to take the veil. But the convent then, as since, was a living
grave to all who took its vows, and was hated by brilliant women who
were not religious. The convent necessarily and logically, according to
the theology of the Middle Ages, was a retreat from the world,--a cell
of expiation; and yet it was the only place where a woman could
be educated.

Héloïse, it would seem, made extraordinary attainments, and spoke Latin
as well as her native tongue. She won universal admiration, and in due
time, at the age of eighteen, returned to her uncle's house, on the
banks of the Seine, on the island called the Cité, where the majestic
cathedral and the castle of the king towered above the rude houses of
the people. Adjoining the church were the cloisters of the monks and
the Episcopal School, the infant university of Paris, over which the
Archdeacon of Paris, William of Champeaux, presided in scholastic
dignity and pride,--next to the bishop the most influential man in
Paris. The teachers of this school, or masters and doctors as they were
called, and the priests of the cathedral formed the intellectual
aristocracy of the city, and they were frequent visitors at the house of
Fulbert the canon. His niece, as she was presumed to be, was the great
object of attraction. There never was a time when intellectual Frenchmen
have not bowed down to cultivated women. Héloïse, though only a girl,
was a queen of such society as existed in the city, albeit more admired
by men than women,--poetical, imaginative, witty, ready, frank, with a
singular appreciation of intellectual excellence, dazzled by literary
fame, and looking up to those brilliant men who worshipped her.

In truth, Héloïse was a prodigy. She was vastly superior to the men who
surrounded her, most of whom were pedants, or sophists, or bigots;
dignitaries indeed, but men who exalted the accidental and the external