He acknowledges that he made her take the veil for his own selfish reasons, but is now bound to admit that “God rejected my offering and my prayer, and continued my punishment by suffering me to continue my love.  Thus I bear alike the guilt of your vows and of the passion that preceded them, and must be tormented all the days of my life.”  Once more he adjures her to deliver herself from the “shameful remains” of a passion which has taken too deep root.  “To love Heloise truly,” he closes, “is to leave her to that quiet which retirement and virtue afford.  I have resolved it:  this letter shall be my last fault.  Adieu!  I hope you will be willing, when you have finished this mortal life, to be buried near me.  Your cold ashes need then fear nothing, and my tomb shall be more rich and renowned.”

III.—­Heloise to Abelard

The passion of Heloise is only inflamed by this letter from Abelard.  She has got him to write, and now she wants to see him and to hear more about him.  She cynically remarks that he has made greater advances in the way of devotion than she could wish.  There, alas! she is too weak to follow him.  But she must have his advice and spiritual comfort.  “Can you have the cruelty to abandon me?  The fear of this stabs my heart.”  She reproaches him for the “fearful presages” of death he had made in his letter.  And as regards his wish that she should take care of his remains, she says:  “Heaven, severe as it has been to me, is not so insensible as to permit me to live one moment after you.  Life without Abelard were an insupportable punishment, and death a most exquisite happiness if by that means I could be united to him.  If Heaven but hearken to my continual cry, your days will be prolonged and you will bury me.”  It is his part, she says, to prepare her for the great crisis, to receive her last sighs.  What could she hope for if he were taken away?  “I have renounced without difficulty all the charms of life, preserving only my love, and the secret pleasure of thinking incessantly of you and hearing that you live.  Dear Abelard, pity my despair!  The higher you raised me above other women, who envied me your love, the more sensible am I now of the loss of your heart.  I was exalted to the top of happiness only that I might have the more terrible fall.  Nothing could be compared to my pleasures, and now nothing can equal my misery.”

She blames herself entirely for Abelard’s present position.  “I, wretched I, have ruined you, and have been the cause of all your misfortunes.  How dangerous it is for a great man to suffer himself to be moved by our sex!  He ought from his infancy to be inured to insensibility of heart against all our charms.  I have long examined things, and have found that death is less dangerous than beauty.  It is the shipwreck of liberty, a fatal snare, from which it is impossible ever to get free.”