would be almost impossible; for, while the very minor clergy
sometimes married in spite of the papal bulls, matrimony was
becoming a fatal bar to ecclesiastical promotion. And so Heloise
pleaded pitifully, both with her uncle and with Abelard, that
there should be no marriage. She would rather bear all manner of
disgrace than stand in the way of Abelard's advancement.

He has himself given some of the words in which she pleaded with
him:

What glory shall I win from you, when I have made you quite
inglorious and have humbled both of us? What vengeance will the
world inflict on me if I deprive it of one so brilliant? What
curses will follow such a marriage? How outrageous would it be
that you, whom nature created for the universal good, should be
devoted to one woman and plunged into such disgrace? I loathe the
thought of a marriage which would humiliate you.

Indeed, every possible effort which another woman in her place
would employ to make him marry her she used in order to dissuade
him. Finally, her sweet face streaming with tears, she uttered
that tremendous sentence which makes one really think that she
loved him as no other woman ever loved a man. She cried out, in an
agony of self-sacrifice:

"I would rather be your mistress than the wife even of an
emperor!"

Nevertheless, the two were married, and Abelard returned to his
lecture-room and to his studies. For months they met but seldom.