flesh: but I spare you" (I Cor. vii, 27). And again: "But I would
have you to be free from cares" (I Cor. vii, 32). But if I would
heed neither the counsel of the Apostle nor the exhortations of the
saints regarding this heavy yoke of matrimony, she bade me at least
consider the advice of the philosophers, and weigh carefully what
had been written on this subject either by them or concerning their
lives. Even the saints themselves have often and earnestly spoken
on this subject for the purpose of warning us. Thus St. Jerome,
in his first book against Jovinianus, makes Theophrastus set forth
in great detail the intolerable annoyances and the endless
disturbances of married life, demonstrating with the most
convincing arguments that no wise man should ever have a wife, and
concluding his reasons for this philosophic exhortation with these
words: "Who among Christians would not be overwhelmed by such
arguments as these advanced by Theophrastus?"

Again, in the same work, St. Jerome tells how Cicero, asked by
Hircius after his divorce of Terentia whether he would marry the
sister of Hircius, replied that he would do no such thing, saying
that he could not devote himself to a wife and to philosophy at the
same time. Cicero does not, indeed, precisely speak of "devoting
himself," but he does add that he did not wish to undertake
anything which might rival his study of philosophy in its demands
upon him.

Then, turning from the consideration of such hindrances to the
study of philosophy, Héloïse bade me observe what were the
conditions of honourable wedlock. What possible concord could there
be between scholars and domestics, between authors and cradles,
between books or tablets and distaffs, between the stylus or the