austere dignity of the priest.

But Héloïse was more human and less conventional. She had not conquered
her love; once given, it could not be taken back. She accepted her
dreary immolation in the convent, since she obeyed Abélard both as
husband and as a spiritual father; but she would have left the convent
and rejoined him had he demanded it, for marriage was to her more sacred
than the veil. She was more emancipated from the ideas of her
superstitious age than even the bold and rationalistic philosopher. With
all her moral and spiritual elevation, Héloïse could not conquer her
love. And, as a wedded wife, why should she conquer it? She was both nun
and wife. If fault there was, it was as wife, in immuring herself in a
convent and denying the marriage. It should have been openly avowed; the
denial of it placed her in a false position, as a fallen woman. Yet, as
a fallen woman, she regained her position in the eyes of the world. She
was a lady abbess. It was impossible for a woman to enjoy a higher
position than the control of a convent. As abbess, she enjoyed the
friendship and respect of some of the saintliest and greatest characters
of the age, even of such a man as Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny.
And it is impossible that she should have won the friendship of such a
man, if she herself had not been irreproachable in her own character.
The error in judging Héloïse is, that she, as nun, had no right to love.
But the love existed long before she took the veil, and was consecrated
by marriage, even though private. By the mediaeval and conventional
stand point, it is true, the wife was lost in the nun. That is the view
that Abélard took,--that it was a sin to love his wife any longer. But
Héloïse felt that it was no sin to love him who was her life. She
continued to live in him who ruled over her, and to whose desire her
will was subject and obedient, according to that eternal law declared in
the garden of Eden.