so vivid, so vibrating with the curious intensity of his generation, that it needed only to have been written in “Romieu” to be the chief monument of early French prose, as the western portal of Chartres is the chief monument of early French sculpture, and of about the same date.  Unfortunately Abelard was a noble scholar, who necessarily wrote and talked Latin, even with Heloise, and, although the Latin was mediaeval, it is not much the better on that account, because, in spite of its quaintness, the naivetes of a young language—­the egotism, jealousies, suspicions, boastings, and lamentations of a childlike time—­take a false air of outworn Rome and Byzantium, although, underneath, the spirit lives:—­

I arrived at last in Paris where for a long time dialectics had specially flourished under William of Champeaux, rightly reckoned the first of my masters in that branch of study.  I stayed some time in his school, but, though well received at first, I soon got to be an annoyance to him because I persisted in refuting certain ideas of his, and because, not being afraid to enter into argument against him, I sometimes got the better.  This boldness, too, roused the wrath of those fellowstudents who were classed higher, because I was the youngest and the last comer.  This was the beginning of my series of misfortunes which still last; my renown every day increasing, envy was kindled against me in every direction.

This picture of the boy of twenty, harassing the professor, day after day, in his own lecture-room before hundreds of older students, paints Abelard to the life; but one may safely add a few touches that heighten the effect; as that William of Champeaux himself was barely thirty, and that Abelard throughout his career, made use of every social and personal advantage to gain a point, with little scruple either in manner or in sophistry.  One may easily imagine the scene.  Teachers are always much the same.  Pupils and students differ only in degrees of docility.  In 1100, both classes began by accepting the foundations of society, as they have to do still; only they then accepted laws of the Church and Aristotle, while now they accept laws of the legislature and of energy.  In 1100, the students took for granted that, with the help of Aristotle and syllogisms, they could build out the Church intellectually, as the architects, with the help of the pointed arch, were soon to enlarge it architecturally.  They never doubted the certainty of their method.  To them words had fixed values, like numbers, and syllogisms were hewn stones that needed only to be set in place, in order to reach any height or support any weight.  Every sentence was made to take the form of a syllogism.  One must have been educated in a Jesuit or Dominican school in order to frame these syllogisms correctly, but merely by way of illustration one may timidly suggest how the phrases sounded in their simplest form.  For example, Plato or other equally good authority