Thou to me and I to thee,
     Knit for all eternity. 
     In my heart art thou imprisoned,
     And I threw away the key. 
     Nevermore canst thou be free.

In the third letter she drops the formal Latin and addresses him in intimate, simple German.  But the man’s replies are clumsy and strange, and plainly evidence his uncertainty of himself:  “You have put a human head on a horse’s neck, and the beautiful female form ends in an ugly fish’s tail.”  It looks as if a parting were inevitable.

But the most touching testimony from the Middle Ages is the famous love story of Abelard and Heloise.  We probably possess no older document of the passionate devotion of a woman, differing in nothing from the sentiment of the present age, than the letters of Heloise.  Abelard persuaded her to take the veil and repent in a convent the sin of voluptuousness—­but she knows nothing of God—­her whole soul is wrapped up in her lover:  “I expect no reward from God, for what I did was not done for love of Him....  I wanted nothing from you but yourself; I desired only you, not that which belonged to you; I did not expect marriage or gifts; I did not seek to gratify my desires and do my will, but yours, and well you know that I am speaking the truth!  The name of wife may seem sacred and honourable to you, but I prefer to be called your mistress or even your harlot.  The more I degraded myself for your sake, the more I hoped to find grace in your eyes....  I renounced all the pleasures of the world to live only for you; I kept nothing for myself but the desire to belong entirely to you.”  Abelard’s replies are pious sermons and theological treatises; he thinks of the love of the past only as the cursed desires of the flesh, the snare in which the devil had caught them, and urges Heloise to thank God that henceforth they are safe.  “My love which entangled both of us in sin,” he says in one of his letters, “deserves not the name of love, for it was naught but carnal lust.  I sought in you the gratification of my sinful desires,” etc.  He blessed the savage crime committed on him because it saved him for ever from the sin of voluptuousness.  What Heloise loved and treasured as her sweetest memory, was to him hell and devil’s work.  He wrote to her almost as if in mockery:  “What splendid interest does the talent of your wisdom bear to the Lord day after day!  How many spiritual daughters you have borne to Him!  What a terrible loss it would have been if you had abandoned yourself to the lust of the flesh, had borne, with travail, a few earthly children, while now, with joy, you bear a great number of daughters for the kingdom of Heaven.  You would have remained a woman like all the rest, but now you are far exalted even above men.”  This correspondence plainly reveals the tragedy of the lacerated man of the Middle Ages, as compared to the never-varying woman, emerging perfect from the hands of nature.  A long and toilsome road still stretches out before him; she had reached the goal, without a struggle, at the outset.  How strange is this cry of a mediaeval nun:  “It seems as if the world had grown old, as if all men and all living creatures had lost their freshness, as if love had grown cold not in many, but in all hearts.”