As a semi-warlike but religious age produced a David, with his strikingly double nature perpetually at war with itself and looking for aid to God,—­his “sun,” his “shield,” his hope, and joy,—­so an equally unenlightened but devout age produced a Heloise, the impersonation of sympathy, disinterestedness, suffering, forgiveness, and resignation.  I have already described this dark, sad, turbulent, superstitious, ignorant period of strife and suffering, yet not without its poetic charms and religious aspirations; when the convent and the castle were its chief external features, and when a life of meditation was as marked as a life of bodily activity, as if old age and youth were battling for supremacy,—­a very peculiar state of society, in which we see the loftiest speculations of the intellect and the highest triumphs of faith blended with puerile enterprises and misdirected physical forces.

In this semi-barbaric age Heloise was born, about the year 1101.  Nobody knew who was her father, although it was surmised that he belonged to the illustrious family of the Montmorencies, which traced an unbroken lineage to Pharimond, before the time of Clovis.  She lived with her uncle Fulbert, an ignorant, worldly-wise old canon of the Cathedral Church of Notre Dame in Paris.  He called her his niece; but whether niece, or daughter, or adopted child, was a mystery.  She was of extraordinary beauty, though remarkable for expression rather than for regularity of feature.  In intellect she was precocious and brilliant; but the qualities of a great soul shone above the radiance of her wit.  She was bright, amiable, affectionate, and sympathetic,—­the type of an interesting woman.  The ecclesiastic was justly proud of her, and gave to her all the education the age afforded.  Although not meaning to be a nun, she was educated in a neighboring convent,—­for convents, even in those times, were female seminaries, containing many inmates who never intended to take the veil.  But the convent then, as since, was a living grave to all who took its vows, and was hated by brilliant women who were not religious.  The convent necessarily and logically, according to the theology of the Middle Ages, was a retreat from the world,—­a cell of expiation; and yet it was the only place where a woman could be educated.

Heloise, it would seem, made extraordinary attainments, and spoke Latin as well as her native tongue.  She won universal admiration, and in due time, at the age of eighteen, returned to her uncle’s house, on the banks of the Seine, on the island called the Cite, where the majestic cathedral and the castle of the king towered above the rude houses of the people.  Adjoining the church were the cloisters of the monks and the Episcopal School, the infant university of Paris, over which the Archdeacon of Paris, William of Champeaux, presided in scholastic dignity and pride,—­next to the bishop the most influential man in Paris.  The teachers of this school, or masters and doctors