follow him. But she must have his advice and spiritual comfort. "Can you
have the cruelty to abandon me? The fear of this stabs my heart." She
reproaches him for the "fearful presages" of death he had made in his
letter. And as regards his wish that she should take care of his
remains, she says: "Heaven, severe as it has been to me, is not so
insensible as to permit me to live one moment after you. Life without
Abelard were an insupportable punishment, and death a most exquisite
happiness if by that means I could be united to him. If Heaven but
hearken to my continual cry, your days will be prolonged and you will
bury me." It is his part, she says, to prepare _her_ for the great
crisis, to receive her last sighs. What could she hope for if _he_ were
taken away? "I have renounced without difficulty all the charms of life,
preserving only my love, and the secret pleasure of thinking incessantly
of you and hearing that you live. Dear Abelard, pity my despair! The
higher you raised me above other women, who envied me your love, the
more sensible am I now of the loss of your heart. I was exalted to the
top of happiness only that I might have the more terrible fall. Nothing
could be compared to my pleasures, and now nothing can equal my misery."

She blames herself entirely for Abelard's present position. "I, wretched
I, have ruined you, and have been the cause of all your misfortunes. How
dangerous it is for a great man to suffer himself to be moved by our
sex! He ought from his infancy to be inured to insensibility of heart
against all our charms. I have long examined things, and have found that
death is less dangerous than beauty. It is the shipwreck of liberty, a
fatal snare, from which it is impossible ever to get free."

She protests that she cannot forget. "Even into holy places before the
altar I carry the memory of our love; and, far from lamenting for having
been seduced by pleasures, I sigh for having lost them." She counts