CHAPTER VII

OF THE ARGUMENTS OF HÉLOÏSE AGAINST WEDLOCK--OF HOW NONE THE LESS
HE MADE HER HIS WIFE

Forthwith I repaired to my own country, and brought back thence my
mistress, that I might make her my wife. She, however, most
violently disapproved of this, and for two chief reasons: the
danger thereof, and the disgrace which it would bring upon me. She
swore that her uncle would never be appeased by such satisfaction
as this, as, indeed, afterwards proved only too true. She asked how
she could ever glory in me if she should make me thus inglorious,
and should shame herself along with me. What penalties, she said,
would the world rightly demand of her if she should rob it of so
shining a light! What curses would follow such a loss to the
Church, what tears among the philosophers would result from such a
marriage! How unfitting, how lamentable it would be for me, whom
nature had made for the whole world, to devote myself to one woman
solely, and to subject myself to such humiliation! She vehemently
rejected this marriage, which she felt would be in every way
ignominious and burdensome to me.

Besides dwelling thus on the disgrace to me, she reminded me of the
hardships of married life, to the avoidance of which the Apostle
exhorts us, saying: "Art thou loosed from a wife? seek not a wife.
But and if thou marry, thou hast not sinned; and if a virgin marry,
she hath not sinned. Nevertheless such shall have trouble in the