Abelard seems
to have exercised an irresistible fascination for men and women
alike, and his plot succeeded to admiration. Stricken by a belated
remorse, he finally married Heloise against her unselfish protests
and partly to legitimatize his unborn child, and shortly after he
was surprised and overpowered by emissaries of Canon Fulbert and
subjected to irreparable mutilation. He tells the story with
perfect frankness and with hardly more than formal expressions of
compunction, and thereafter follows the narrative of their
separation, he to a monastery, she to a convent, and of his care
for her during her conventual life, or at least for that part of it
that had passed before the "History" was written. Through the whole
story it is Heloise who shines brightly as a curiously beautiful
personality, unselfish, self sacrificing, and almost virginal in
her purity in spite of her fault. One has for her only sympathy and
affection whereas it is difficult to feel either for Abelard in
spite of his belated efforts at rectifying his own sin and his
life-long devotion to his solitary wife in her hidden cloister.
The whole story was instantly known, Abelard's assailants were
punished in kind, .
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