Letters of Abelard and Heloise
could be constant; you have left me no colour of making your excuse.
I am earnestly desirous to see you; but if that be impossible, I will
content myself with a few lines from your hand. Is it so hard for one
who loves to write? I ask for none of your letters filled with
learning, and writ for reputation; all I desire is such letters as
the heart dictates, and which the hand can scarce write fast enough.
How did I deceive myself with the hopes that you would be wholly mine
when I took the veil, and engaged myself to live for ever under your
laws? For in being professed, I vowed no more than to be yours only,
and I obliged myself voluntarily to a confinement in which you
desired to place me. Death only then can make me leave the place
where you have fixed me; and then too, my ashes shall rest, here and
wait for your, in order to shew my obedience and devotedness to you
to the latest moment possible.
Why should I conceal from you the secret of my call? You know it
was neither zeal nor devotion which led me to the cloister. Your
conscience is too faithful a witness to permit you to disown it. Yet
here I am, and here I will remain; to this place an unfortunate love,
and my cruel relations, have condemned me. But if you do not continue
your concern for me, If I lose your affection, what have I gained by
my imprisonment? What recompense can I hope for? The unhappy
consequence of a criminal conduit, and your disgraces, have put on me
this habit of chastity, and not the sincere desire of being truly
penitent. Thus I strive and labour in vain. Among those whose are
wedded to God I serve a man: among the heroic supporters of the
Cross, I am a poor slave to a human passion: at the head of a
religious community I am devoted to _Abelard_ only. What a
prodigy am I? Enlighten me, O Lord! Does thy grace or my own despair
draw these words from me? I am sensible I am in the Temple of
Chastity, covered only with the ashes of that fire which hath
consumed us. I am here, I confess, a sinner, but one who, far from
weeping for her sins, weeps only for her lover; far from abhorring
her crimes, endeavours only to add to them; and who, with a weakness
unbecoming the state I am in, please myself continually with the
remembrance of past actions, when it is impossible to renew them.
Good God! what is all this! I reproach myself for my own faults, I
accuse you for yours, and to what purpose? Veiled as I am, behold in
what a disorder you have plunged me! How difficult is it to fight
always for duty against inclination? I know what obligations this
veil lays on me, but I feel more strongly what power a long habitual
passion has over my heart. I am conquered by my inclination. My love
troubles my mind, and disorders my will. Sometimes I am swayed by the
sentiments of piety which arise in me, and the next moment I yield up
my imagination to all that is amorous and tender. I tell you to-day
what I would not have said to you yesterday. I had resolved to love
you no more; I considered I had made a vow, taken the veil, and am as
it were dead and buried; yet there rises unexpectedly from the bottom
of my heart a passion which triumphs over all these notions, and
darkens all my reason and devotion. You reign in such inward retreats
of my soul, that I know not where to attack you. When I endeavour to
break those chains by which I am bound to you, I only deceive myself,
and all the efforts I am able to make serve but to bind them the
faster. Oh, for Pity's sake help a wretch to renounce her desires
herself, and if it be possible, even to renounce you! If you are a
lover, a father, help a mistress, comfort a child! These tender
names, cannot they move you? Yield either to pity or love. If you
gratify my request I shall continue a Religious without longer
profaning my calling. I am ready to humble myself with you to the
wonderful providence of God, who does all things for our
sanctification; who, by his grace, pacifies all that is vicious and
corrupt in the principle, and; by the inconceivable riches of his
mercy, draws us to himself against our wishes, and by degrees opens
our eyes to discern the greatness of his bounty, which at first we
would not understand.
I thought to end my letter here. But now I am complaining against
you, I must unload my heart, and tell you all its jealousies, and
reproaches. Indeed I thought it something hard, that when we had both
engaged to consecrate ourselves to Heaven, you should insist upon
doing it first. Does _Abelard_ then, said I, suspect he shall
see renewed in me the example of Lot's wife, who could not forbear
looking back when she left Sodom? If my youth and sex might give
occasion of fear that I should return to the world, could not my
behaviour, my fidelity, and this heart which you ought to know, could
not banish such ungenerous apprehensions? This distrustful foresight
touched me sensibly. I said to myself, there was a time when he could
rely upon my bare word, and does he now want vows to secure himself
of me? What occasion have I given him in the whole course of my life
to admit the least suspicion? I could meet him at all his
assignations, and would I decline following him to the feats of
holiness? I who have not refused to be a victim of pleasure to
gratify him, can he think I would refuse to be a sacrifice of honour
to obey him? Has Vice such charms to well-born souls? and, when we
have once drank of the cup of sinners, is it with such difficulty
that we take the chalice of saints? Or did you believe yourself a
greater master to teach vice than virtue, or did you think it was
more easy to persuade me to the first than the latter? No, this
suspicion would be injurious to both. Virtue is too amiable not to be
embraced, when you reveal her charms; and Vice too hideous not to be
avoided, when you show her deformities. Nay, when you please, any
thing seems lovely to me, and nothing is frightful or difficult when
you are by. I am only weak when I am alone and unsupported by you,
and therefore it depends on you alone that I may be such as you
desire. I wish to Heav'n you had not such a power over me. If you had
any occasion to fear, you would be less negligent. But what is there
for you to fear? I have done too much, and now have nothing more to
do but to triumph over your ingratitude. When we lived happy
together, you might have made it doubt whether pleasure or affection
united me more to you; but the place from whence I write to you must
now have entirely taken away that doubt. Even here I love you as much
as ever I did in the world. If I had loved pleasures, could I not yet
have found means to have gratified myself? I was not above twenty-two
years old; and there were other men left though I was deprived of
_Abelard_ and yet did I not bury myself alive in a nunnery, and
triumph over love, at an age capable of enjoying it in its full
latitude? 'Tis to you I sacrifice these remains of a transitory
beauty, these widowed nights and tedious days which I pass without
seeing you; and since you cannot possess them, I take them from you
to offer them to Heaven, and to make, alas! but a secondary oblation
of my heart, my days, and my life!
I am sensible I have dwelt too long on this head; I ought to speak
less to you of your misfortunes, and of my own sufferings, for love
of you. We tarnish the lustre of our most beautiful actions when we
applaud them ourselves. This is true, and yet there is a time when we
may with decency commend ourselves; when we have to do with those
whom base ingratitude has stupefied, we cannot too much praise our
own good actions. Now, if you were of this sort of men, this would be
a home-reflection on you. Irresolute as I am, I still love you, and
yet I must hope for nothing, I have renounced life, and stripped
myself of every thing, but I find I neither have nor can renounce my
_Abelard_. Though I have lost my lover, I still preserve my
love. O vows! O convent! I have not lost my humanity under your
inexorable discipline! You have not made me marble by changing my
habit. My heart is not totally hardened by my perpetual imprisonment;
I am still sensible to what has touched me, though, alas I ought
not to be so. Without offending your commands, permit a lover to
exhort me to live in obedience to your rigorous rules. Your yoke will
be lighter, if that hand support me under it; your exercises will be
amiable, if he shows me their advantage. Retirement, solitude! you
will not appear terrible, if I may but still know I have any place in
his memory. A heart which has been so sensibly affected as mine
cannot soon be indifferent. We fluctuate long between love and hatred
before we can arrive at a happy tranquillity, and we always flatter
ourselves with some distant hope that we shall not be quite
forgotten.
Yes, _Abelard_, I conjure you by the chains I bear here to
ease the weight of them, and make them as agreeable as I wish they
were to me. Teach me the maxims of divine love. Since you have
forsaken me, I glory in being wedded to Heaven. My heart adores that
title, and disdains any other. Tell me how this divine love is
nourished, how it operates, and purifies itself. When we were tossed
in the ocean of the world, we could hear of nothing but your verses,
which published every where our joys and our pleasures: now we are in
the haven of grace, is it not fit that you should discourse to me of
this happiness, and teach me every thing which might improve and
heighten it? Shew me the same complaisance in my present condition as
you did when we were in the world. Without changing the ardour of our
affections, let us change their object; let us leave our songs, and
sing hymns; let us lift up our hearts to God, and have no transports
but for his glory.
I expect this from you as a thing you cannot refuse me. God has a
peculiar right over the hearts of great men which he has created.
When he pleases to touch them, he ravishes them, and lets them not
speak nor breathe but for his glory. Till that moment of grace
arrives, O think of me----do not forget me;--remember my love,
my fidelity, my constancy; love me as your mistress, cherish
me as your child, your sister, your wife. Consider that I still love
you, and yet strive to avoid loving you. What a word, what a design
is this! I shake with horror, and my heart revolts against what I
say. I shall blot all my paper with tears--I end my long letter,
wishing you, if you can desire it, (would to Heaven I could,) for
ever adieu.
ADVERTISEMENT.
That the reader may make a right judgment on the following Letter,
it is proper he should be informed of the condition _Abelard_
was in when he wrote it. The Duke of Britany whose subject he was
born, jealous of the glory of France, which then engrossed all the
most famous scholars of Europe, and being, besides, acquainted with
the persecution _Abelard_ had suffered from his enemies, had
nominated him to the Abbey of St. Gildas, and, by this benefaction
and mark of his esteem, engaged him to past the rest of his days in
his dominions. He received this favour with great joy, imagining,
that by leaving France he should lose his passion, and gain a new
turn of mind upon entering into his new dignity. The Abbey of St.
Gildas is seated upon a rock, which the sea beats with its waves.
_Abelard_, who had lain on himself the necessity of vanquishing
a passion which absence had in a great measure weakened, endeavoured
in this solitude to extinguish the remains of it by his tears. But
upon his receiving the foregoing letter he could not resist so
powerful an attack, but proves as weak and as much to be pitied as
_Heloise_. 'Tis not then a master or director that speaks to
her, but a man who had loved her, and loves her still: and under this