But Heloise was more human and less conventional.  She had not conquered her love; once given, it could not be taken back.  She accepted her dreary immolation in the convent, since she obeyed Abelard both as husband and as a spiritual father; but she would have left the convent and rejoined him had he demanded it, for marriage was to her more sacred than the veil.  She was more emancipated from the ideas of her superstitious age than even the bold and rationalistic philosopher.  With all her moral and spiritual elevation, Heloise could not conquer her love.  And, as a wedded wife, why should she conquer it?  She was both nun and wife.  If fault there was, it was as wife, in immuring herself in a convent and denying the marriage.  It should have been openly avowed; the denial of it placed her in a false position, as a fallen woman.  Yet, as a fallen woman, she regained her position in the eyes of the world.  She was a lady abbess.  It was impossible for a woman to enjoy a higher position than the control of a convent.  As abbess, she enjoyed the friendship and respect of some of the saintliest and greatest characters of the age, even of such a man as Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny.  And it is impossible that she should have won the friendship of such a man, if she herself had not been irreproachable in her own character.  The error in judging Heloise is, that she, as nun, had no right to love.  But the love existed long before she took the veil, and was consecrated by marriage, even though private.  By the mediaeval and conventional stand point, it is true, the wife was lost in the nun.  That is the view that Abelard took,—­that it was a sin to love his wife any longer.  But Heloise felt that it was no sin to love him who was her life.  She continued to live in him who ruled over her, and to whose desire her will was subject and obedient, according to that eternal law declared in the garden of Eden.

Nor could this have been otherwise so long as Abelard retained the admiration of Heloise, and was worthy of her devotion.  We cannot tell what changes may have taken place in her soul had he been grovelling, or tyrannical, a slave of degrading habits, or had he treated her with cruel harshness, or ceased to sympathize with her sorrows, or transferred his affections to another object.  But whatever love he had to give, he gave to her to the end, so far as the ideas of his age would permit.  His fault was in making a nun of his wife, which was in the eyes of the world a virtual repudiation; even though, from a principle of sublime obedience and self-sacrifice, she consented to the separation.  Was Josephine to blame because she loved a selfish man after she was repudiated?  Heloise was simply unable to conquer a powerful love.  It was not converted into hatred, because Abelard, in her eyes, seemed still to be worthy of it.  She regarded him as a saint, forced by the ideas of his age to crush a mortal love,—­which she herself could not do, because it was a sentiment,