Mont Ste. Généviève. William, hearing this, returned to Paris and tried
to put him down, but in vain. Abélard was completely victorious.

After a time he returned once more to Palais, to see his mother, who was
about to enter the cloister, as his father had done some time before.
When this visit was over, instead of returning to Paris to lecture on
dialectic, he went to Laon to study theology under the then famous
Anselm. Here, convinced of the showy superficiality of Anselm, he once
more got into difficulty, by undertaking to expound a chapter of Ezekiel
without having studied it under any teacher. Though at first derided by
his fellow-students, he succeeded so well as to draw a crowd of them to
hear him, and so excited the envy of Anselm that the latter forbade him
to teach in Laon. Abélard accordingly returned once more to Paris,
convinced that he was fit to shine as a lecturer, not only on dialectic,
but also on theology. And his audiences thought so also; for his
lectures on Ezekiel were very popular and drew crowds. He was now at the
height of his fame (1118).

The result of all these triumphs over dialecticians and theologians was
unfortunate. He not only felt himself the intellectual superior of any
living man, which he probably was, but he also began to look down upon
the current thought of his time as obsolete and unworthy, and to set at
naught even current opinion. He was now on the verge of forty, and his
life had so far been one of spotless purity; but now, under the
influence of vanity, this too gave way. Having no further conquests to
make in the intellectual world, he began to consider whether, with his
great personal beauty, manly bearing, and confident address, he might
not make conquests in the social world, and arrived at the conclusion
that no woman could reject him or refuse him her favor.