the Church he had sacrificed philosophy and fame to a second Delilah.
And Héloïse was even more affected by his humiliation than himself. She
more than he was opposed to marriage, knowing that this would doom him
to neglect and reproach. Abélard would perhaps have consented to an open
marriage had Héloïse been willing; but with a strange perversity she
refused. His reputation and interests were dearer to her than was her
own fair name. She sacrificed herself to his fame; she blinded herself
to the greatest mistake a woman could make. The excess of her love made
her insensible to the principles of an immutable morality. Circumstances
palliated her course, but did not excuse it. The fatal consequences of
her folly pursued her into the immensity of subsequent grief; and though
afterwards she was assured of peace and forgiveness in the depths of her
repentance, the demon of infatuated love was not easily exorcised. She
may have been unconscious of degradation in the boundless spirit of
self-sacrifice which she was willing to make for the object of her
devotion, but she lost both dignity and fame. She entreated him who was
now quoted as a reproach to human weakness, since the languor of passion
had weakened his power and his eloquence, to sacrifice her to his fame;
"to permit her no longer to adore him as a divinity who accepts the
homage of his worshippers; to love her no longer, if this love
diminished his reputation; to reduce her even, if necessary, to the
condition of a woman despised by the world, since the glory of his love
would more than compensate for the contempt of the universe."

"What reproaches," said she, "should I merit from the Church and the
schools of philosophy, were I to draw from them their brightest star!
And shall a woman dare to take to herself that man whom Nature meant to
be the ornament and benefactor of the human race? Then reflect on the
nature of matrimony, with its littleness and cares. How inconsistent it
is with the dignity of a wise man! Saint Paul earnestly dissuades from