Letters of Abelard and Heloise
character we are to consider _Abelard_ when he wrote the
following Letter. If he seems, by some passages in it, to have begun
to feel the motions of divine grace they appear as yet to be only by
starts, and without any uniformity.
LETTER III.
_Abelard_ to _Heloise._
Could I have imagined that a letter not written to yourself could
have fallen into your hands, I had been more cautious not to have
inserted any thing in it which might awaken the memory of our past
misfortunes. I described with boldness the series of my disgraces to
a friend, in order to make him less sensible of the loss he had
sustained. If by this well meaning artifice I have disturbed you, I
purpose here to dry up those tears which the sad description
occasioned you to shed: I intend to mix my grief with yours, and pour
out my heart before you; in short, to lay open before your eyes all
my trouble, and the secrets of my soul, which my vanity has hitherto
made me conceal from the rest of the world, and which you now force
from me, in spite of my resolutions to the contrary.
It is true, that in a sense of the afflictions which had befallen
us, and observing that no change of our condition was to be expected;
that those prosperous days which had seduced us were now past, and
there remained nothing but to eraze out of our minds, by painful
endeavours, all marks and remembrance of them, I had wished to find
in philosophy and religion a remedy for my disgrace; I searched out
an asylum to secure me from love. I was come to the sad experiment of
making vows to harden my heart. But what have I gained by this? If my
passion has been put under a restraint, my ideas yet remain. I
promise myself that I will forget you, and yet cannot think of it
without loving you; and am pleased with that thought. My love is not
at all weakened by those reflections I make in order to free myself.
The silence I am surrounded with makes me more sensible to its
impressions; and while I am unemployed with any other things, this
makes itself the business of my whole vacation; till, after a
multitude of useless endeavours, I begin to persuade myself that it
is a superfluous trouble to drive to free myself; and that it is
wisdom sufficient if I can conceal from every one but you my
confusion and weakness.
I removed to a distance from your person, with an intention of
avoiding you as an enemy; and yet I incessantly seek for you in my
mind; I recall your image in my memory; and in such different
disquietudes I betray and contradict myself. I hate you: I love you.
Shame presses me on all sides: I am at this moment afraid lest I
should seem more indifferent than you, and yet I am ashamed to
discover my trouble.
How weak are we in ourselves, if we do not support ourselves on
the cross of Christ? Shall we have so little courage, and shall that
uncertainty your heart labours with, of serving two masters, affect
mine too? You see the confusion I am in, what I blame myself for, and
what I suffer. Religion commands me to pursue virtue, since I have
nothing to hope for from love. But love still preserves its dominion
in my fancy, and entertains itself with past pleasures. Memory
supplies the place of a mistress. Piety and duty are not always the
fruits of retirement; even in deserts, when the dew of heaven falls
not on us, we love what we ought no longer to love. The passions,
stirred up by solitude, fill those regions of death and silence; and
it is very seldom that what ought to be is truly followed there, and
that God only is loved and served. Had I always had such notions as
these, I had instructed you better. You call me your Master 'tis
true, you were intrusted to my care. I saw you, I was earnest to
teach you vain sciences; it cost you your innocence, and me my
liberty. Your uncle, who was fond of you, became therefore me enemy,
and revenge himself on me. If now, having lost the power of
satisfying my passion, I had lost too that of loving you, I should
have some consolation. My enemies would have given me that
tranquillity which Origen purchased by a crime. How miserable am I!
My misfortune does not loose my chains, my passion grows furious by
impotence; and that desire I still have for you amidst all my
disgraces makes me more unhappy than the misfortune itself. I find
myself much more guilty in my thoughts of you, even amidst my tears,
than in possessing yourself when I was in full liberty. I continually
think of you, I continually call to mind that day when you bestowed
on me the first marks of your tenderness. In this condition, O Lord!
if I run to prostrate myself before thy altars, if I beseech thee to
pity me, why does not the pure flame of thy Spirit consume the
sacrifice that is offered to thee? Cannot this habit of penitence
which I wear interest Heaven to treat me more favourably? But that is
still inexorable; because my passion still lives in me, the fire is
only covered over with deceitful ashes, and cannot be extinguished
but by extraordinary graces. We deceive men, but nothing is hid from
God.
You tell me, that it is for me you live under that veil which
covers you; why do you profane your vocation with such words? Why
provoke a jealous God by a blasphemy? I hoped, after our separation,
you would have changed your sentiments; I hoped too, that God would
have delivered me from the tumult of my senses, and that contrariety
which reigns in my heart. We commonly die to the affections of those
whom we see no more, and they to ours: absence is the tomb of love.
But to me absence is an unquiet remembrance of what I once loved,
which continually torments me. I flattered myself, that when I should
see you no more, you would only rest in my memory, without giving any
trouble to my mind; that Britany and the sea would inspire other
thoughts; that my fasts and studies would by degrees eraze you out of
my heart; but in spite of severe fasts and redoubled studies, in
spite of the distance of three hundred miles which separates us, your
image, such as you describe yourself in your veil, appears to me, and
confounds all my resolutions.
What means have I not used? I have armed my own hands against
myself? I have exhausted my strength in constant exercises; I comment
upon St. Paul; I dispute with Aristotle; in short, I do all I used to
do before I loved you, but all in vain; nothing can be successful
that opposes you. Oh! do not add to my miseries by your constancy;
forget, if you can, your favours, and that right which they claim
over me; permit me to be indifferent. I envy their happiness who have
never loved; how quiet and easy are they! But the tide of pleasures
has always a reflux of bitterness. I am but too much convinced now of
this; but though I am no longer deceived by love, I am not cured:
while my reason condemns it, my heart declares for it. I am
deplorable that I have not the ability to free myself from a passion
which so many circumstances, this place, my person, and my disgraces,
tend to destroy. I yield, without considering that a resistance would
wipe out my past offences, and would procure me in their stead merit
and repose. Why should you use eloquence to reproach me for my
flight, and for my silence? Spare the recital of our assignations,
and your constant exactness to them; without calling up such
disturbing thoughts, I have enough to suffer. What great advantages
would philosophy give us over other men, if by studying it we could
learn to govern our passions? but how humbled ought we to be when we
cannot master them? What efforts, what relapses, what agitations, do
we undergo? and how long are we tossed in this confusion, unable to
exert our reason, to possess our souls, or to rule our affections?
What a troublesome employment is love! and how valuable is virtue
even upon consideration of our own ease! Recoiled your extravagances
of passion, guess at my distractions: number up our cares, if
possible, our griefs, and our inquietudes; throw these things out of
the account, and let love have all its remaining softness and
pleasure. How little is that? and, yet for such shadows of
enjoyments, which at first appeared to us, are we so weak our whole
lives that we cannot now help writing to each other, covered as we
are with sackcloth and ashes! How much happier should we be, if, by
our humiliation and tears, we could make our repentance sure! The
love of pleasure is not eradicated out of the soul but by
extraordinary efforts; it has so powerful a party in our breasts,
that we find it difficult to condemn it ourselves. What abhorrence
can I be said to have of my sins, if the objects of them are always
amiable to me? How can I separate from the person I love the passion
I must detest? Will the tears I shed be sufficient to render it
odious to me? I know not how it happens, there is always a pleasure
in weeping for a beloved object. 'Tis difficult in our sorrow to
distinguish penitence from love. The memory of the crime, and the
memory of the object which has charmed us, are too nearly related to
be immediately separated: and the love of God in its beginning does
not wholly annihilate the love of the creature. But what excuses
could I not find in you, if the crime were excusable? Unprofitable
honour, troublesome riches, could never tempt me; but those charms,
that beauty, that air, which I yet behold at this instant, have
occasioned my fall. Your looks were the beginning of my guilt; your
eyes, your discourse, pierced my heart; and in spite of that ambition
and glory which filled it, and offered to make defence, love soon
made itself master. God, in order to punish me, forsook me. His
providence permitted those consequences which have since happened.
You are no longer of the world; you have renounced it; I am a
Religious, devoted to solitude; shall we make no advantage of our
condition? Would you destroy my piety in its infant-state? Would you
have me forsake the convent into which I am but newly entered? Must I
renounce my vows? I have made them in the presence of God; whither
shall I fly from his wrath if I violate them? Suffer me to seek for
ease in my duty; how difficult it is to procure that! I pass whole
days and nights alone in this cloister, without closing my eyes. My
love burns fiercer, amidst the happy indifference of those who
surround me, and my heart is at once pierced with your sorrows and
its own. Oh what a loss have I sustained, when I consider your
constancy! What pleasures have I missed enjoying! I ought not to
confess this weakness to you: I am sensible I commit a fault: if I
could have showed more firmness of mind, I should, perhaps, have
provoked your resentment against me, and your anger might work that
effect in you which your virtue could not. If in the world I
published my weakness by verses and love-songs, ought not the dark
cells of this house to conceal that weakness, at least, under an
appearance of piety? Alas! I am still the same! or if I avoid the
evil, I cannot do the good; and yet I ought to join both, in order to
make this manner of living profitable. But how difficult is this in
the trouble which surrounds me? Duty, reason, and decency, which,
upon other occasions have such power over me, are here entirely
useless. The gospel is a language I do not understand, when it
opposes my passion. Those oaths which I have taken before the holy
altar, are feeble helps when opposed to you. Amidst so many voices
which call me to my duty, I hear and obey nothing but the secret
dictates of a desperate passion. Void of all relish for virtue, any
concern for my condition, or any application to my studies, I am
continually present by my imagination where I ought not to be, and I
find I have no power, when I would at any time correct it. I feel a