Each sought to allay, not his own sufferings, but those of the one
he loved. The very sundering of our bodies served but to link our
souls closer together; the plentitude of the love which was denied
to us inflamed us more than ever. Once the first wildness of shame
had passed, it left us more shameless than before, and as shame
died within us the cause of it seemed to us ever more desirable.
And so it chanced with us as, in the stories that the poets tell,
it once happened with Mars and Venus when they were caught together.
It was not long after this that Heloise found that she was
pregnant, and of this she wrote to me in the utmost exultation,
at the same time asking me to consider what had best be done.
Accordingly, on a night when her uncle was absent, we carried out
the plan we had determined on, and I stole her secretly away from
her uncle's house, sending her without delay to my own country. She
remained there with my sister until she gave birth to a son, whom
she named Astrolabe. Meanwhile her uncle, after his return, was
almost mad with grief; only one who had then seen him could rightly
guess the burning agony of his sorrow and the bitterness of his
shame.
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