Part 13

He is alarmed, and his consternation is increased when he learns from Eloisa that the suspicions of her uncle have been aroused. There is but one remedy—marriage. Eloisa protests; for will not marriage rob Abelard of glory and preferment? At last she consents, but with the utmost reluctance, to secret nuptials. Abelard himself, in the celebrated letter written by him, _Ad Amicum_, declares that Fulbert was privy to their union, and that it was the self-sacrificing denial by Eloisa, after the marriage, that any union had taken place, which roused the vindictiveness of her uncle. De Rémusat, I suppose for the sake of dramatic effect, represents Fulbert as ignorant of the marriage, until the mutilated body of Abelard lies at her feet:—

_Fulbert._

Tenez, voilà votre fiancé.

_Heloise_ (se jetant sur son amant).

Mon mari!

_Fulbert._

Son mari! Je suis perdu.

So ends the Third Act. The fourth is called, somewhat arbitrarily, “La Politique,” and is mainly concerned with the condemnation of Abelard by the Council of Soissons. True, the authority of the King is invoked against him; but the enemies by whom Abelard is pursued are theologians, and it is they who humiliated him by compelling him publicly to burn his treatise on the Trinity. But for the reappearance of Eloisa at this critical juncture, the Fourth Act would be somewhat tedious. There is no historical foundation for her intervention; but it is strictly in harmony with what we know of her character, and De Rémusat turns it to admirable account. Abelard asks why she seeks out one who is condemned, who is proscribed, who is silenced? She replies that she has come to be with him on the greatest day of his life. Nothing was wanting to his glory but martyrdom; and now he has obtained it. His work is finished; let him abjure the world that has treated him so ill.

Viens, allons-nous-en, quittons le siècle, fuyons ce pays, la France, le monde chrétien. Chez les infidèles nous trouverons plus de repos, nous serons plus ignorés, nous vivrons plus heureux. Cherchons la retraite la plus profonde, la plus lointaine, la plus perdue; cachons à tous notre vie et notre bonheur.

Next she invokes the seductive allurements of nature, and presents to him a picture of rural loveliness and felicity, recalling the famous invitation to sunny climes in _The Lady of Lyons_:—

Nous irons vers ces climats vantés où le ciel est si pur, l’air si doux, la fleur si embaumée.... Ensemble, nous verrons se lever l’aurore; ensemble, nous verrons le jour finir, et ta main dans ma main, mon cœur sur ton cœur, nous n’aurons qu’une vie pour deux âmes?

Is it that these glowing words recall to Abelard what she has utterly forgotten, and what she was too tender and disinterested a spirit even to remember? He cannot rise to the height of her great argument. “Fuyez, que je ne vous revoie jamais,” he replies. “Votre présence est un supplice, laissez moi!” Her answer reveals the secret of her whole nature:—

En vérité, je ne vous comprends pas. Vous êtes malheureux, opprimé, abandonné, et vous repoussez le seul être au monde qui vous aime et qui vous reste.

But it is all in vain. She still fails to understand him, and, with the faith and humility of all true love, she asks if she has offended him:—

Non, je ne suis pas offensé, remettez-vous, je vous remercie. Héloïse, vous êtes bonne et dévouée, je suis profondement touché de vos soins. Vous allez retourner à votre monastère. Vous savez combien cette maison a besoin de votre présence; ne m’oubliez pas, priez pour moi, vous et vos religieuses.

Growing still colder, his last words are, “Adieu, Madame, je me recommande à vos prières.” She kisses his hand, and exclaims, “Et qui priera pour moi?”

The Fifth Act, entitled “La Mort,” is passed in the Convent of Cluny, where Abelard is a sort of ecclesiastical prisoner under the supervision of Saint Bernard. His one sole desire is to make a pilgrimage to Rome, to explain his doctrines to the Pope, and to get the ban of heresy removed from his teaching. But he is broken in health, and troubled in brain. His mind wanders. In sleep he murmurs the name of Eloisa. His sole consolation is the faithful attachment of a former pupil, who brings him ever and anon news of her who is living and praying at Paracleta. At last he expires; and the drama closes with the tolling of the convent bell.

I have given, I fear, but an inadequate idea of the merits of the play; for its chief value is in the full and varied picture it presents of the life and manners of the time. It is almost needless to say that it is not a stage but a closet drama, and it has the necessary defect of every such composition; it is a little wearisome. But no form, and no treatment, could blunt the interest that must ever cling to the pathetic story of Abelard and Eloisa; and I should be surprised to hear that any reader could close the book without feeling that it is suffused with the _lachrymæ rerum_ that unfailingly touch the human heart.

For the rest, I do not know that anyone could treat the story of the unhappy lovers of the Paraclete, imaginatively, in such a way as to disarm criticism. I do not refer to any technical difficulty, arising out of the central catastrophe in Abelard’s life. To the true imaginative artist, that would mean as little as it meant to Eloisa. Indeed, it would assist him to obtain compassion for Abelard, just as it made Eloisa love him only all the more. It is the something beyond compassion of which Abelard stands in need, that would baffle the most skilful artistic handling. He would necessarily have to be the hero, and, unfortunately, he is not heroic. Were it not that such a woman as Eloisa loved him, I should be inclined to say that he was hateful. I doubt if there ever lived the man altogether worthy of such a love as hers; yet one would be sorry to think that hundreds of men do not exist more worthy of it than he was. One forgives him much for her sake; yet it is her perfection that makes him look the more imperfect. The contrast between her simplicity and his complexity, between her single-minded devotion to him and his many-sided calculations of what would be best for himself, ends by making him odious; and one is compelled to acknowledge the truth of that bitter saying of Rousseau, “Tout homme réflechi est méchant.”

It is to no man-of-letters, recent or remote, neither to Bussy-Rabutin nor to Colardeau, neither to Pope nor to De Rémusat, but to the famous Correspondence of the pathetic pair, that we must turn if we are to understand either their character or their story. The first letter is written by Abelard, not to Eloisa, but to “a Friend,” and relates the leading incidents of his life. Nowhere, it has often been remarked, does a man so thoroughly, because so unconsciously, betray the secret of his disposition as in his letters. _Raconter mon histoire_ is, to this day, a favorite occupation with Frenchmen; and Abelard is garrulous about his own merits, his own grief, his own successes. He speaks contemptuously of William of Champeaux, and with just as little respect of Anselm of Laon. It was, however, customary in the Middle Ages for controversialists to treat each other with scant courtesy; the flattering consideration which people who sneer at each other in private nowadays exhibit towards each other in public not having yet come into fashion. It is when Abelard narrates how he made the acquaintance of Eloisa that we get the full measure of his fundamentally coarse and selfish nature. Fancy a man writing of a woman who had loved him, and loved him as Eloisa loved Abelard, that she was _per faciem non infima_, or, as we should say in English, “not bad-looking”! Fancy his being able to remember, let alone to describe without intolerable shame, that, having heard of her accomplishments, he deliberately planned to win her affections, adding that he felt sure this would be easy, because “tanti quippe tunc nominis eram, et juventutis et formæ gratia præeminebam, ut quamcunque feminarum nostro dignarer amore nullam vererer repulsam,” that he was so celebrated, so young, and so good-looking, that he had no fear of being repulsed by any woman whom he honored with his love! The repugnance inspired by such language would be great, even if he had afterwards appreciated the prize he had begun by coveting so basely. It is not easy to forgive Saint Augustine for his conduct towards the mother of Deodatus. But he, at least, describes the passions of his youth with sincere humility and profound remorse; whilst Abelard recalls without a pang the colloquies and correspondence he planned in order to influence Eloisa. In the same spirit he narrates the tender, passionate passages that ensued. He is equally ignoble when Fulbert discovers their attachment. He excuses himself by reminding her uncle “quanta ruina summos quoque viros ab ipso statim humani generis exordio mulieres dejecerint,” how many of the greatest men, from the beginning of time, have been ruined by the seductions of women. By way of compensation, he tells us that he offered to marry Eloisa on condition that their union should be kept secret, _ne famæ detrimentum caperem_, lest, forsooth, his fame should suffer detriment. If, instead of hiring a couple of bravos Fulbert had taken him by the heels and flung him into the Seine, one’s sense of justice would have been better satisfied.

Turn we a moment from the composed reminiscences of this circumspect dialectician, to the woman _per faciem non infima_, whose heart he had broken and whose life he had ruined. In obedience to his wish she had taken the veil, and writes to him from the Convent of the Paraclete, made over to her by him, and of which she was now the Lady Abbess. She has read his letter “To a friend,” of which she says, with unconscious irony, that though it was composed to soothe that friend’s sorrows, it is full of the sorrows of the writer himself. She finds this the most natural thing in the world; and all she asks is that to her, too, he will write, and that he will instruct her, who gave herself entirely to him, how to direct those who have given themselves entirely to God. She reminds him, not reproachfully, but in order to convince him that she has need of him still, that at a word from him she had completed her own ruin, and that, though he was the only object of her love, she had promptly taken the veil at his bidding, “ut te tam corporis mei quam animi unicum possessorum ostenderem,” in order to show that she belonged to him, and to him alone, body, heart, and soul. “God is my witness,” she goes on, “that in loving you I loved yourself only, not anything you could give or bring me.” Then, going to the utmost limit and horizon of feminine love and self-sacrifice, she adds: “Et si uxoris nomen sanctius ac validus videtur, dulcius mihi semper extitit amicæ vocabulum; aut, si non indigneris, concubinæ vel scorti; ut, quo me videlicet pro te amplius humiliarem, ampliorem apud te consequerer gratiam, et sic etiam excellentiæ tuæ gloriam minus læderem.” How completely Pope has falsified this sentiment in his famous paraphrase! His Epistle of _Eloisa to Abelard_ is, no doubt, an admirable composition; but it is unfair to Eloisa, since its main note is passion, not self-sacrifice, and self-sacrifice was the beginning, middle, and end of her love for Abelard. Once only she reproaches him. He had made her take the religious habit before assuming it himself. Why? Did he doubt her? She is overwhelmed with grief at the thought; for does he not know that she would have gladly either preceded or followed him into the jaws of hell? Nay, she must perforce have done so, for her heart was not hers, but his. Why, then, does he not write and console her? Was it concupiscence, rather than affection, that made them one? For her part, she has no difficulty in answering the question. “Dum tecum carnali fruerer voluptate, utrum id amore vel libidine agerem incertum pluribus habebatur.” Can they, she asks, be in any doubt now? “Nunc enim finis indicat quo id inchoaverrim principio.” The end surely shows by what motive she was impelled at the beginning. Everything she has given up—himself, the world, pleasure, and freedom; reserving to herself nothing but the luxury of still executing his will. Of a truth, it was so; and reading this extraordinary correspondence, anyone who is curious on the subject may discover for himself the eternal distinction between

Short-memoried lust and long-remembering love.

With an utter unconsciousness of his own baseness, Abelard recalls the arguments employed by Eloisa to dissuade him from the marriage insisted on by him solely from dread of the anger of Fulbert and the reproaches of the world. She invoked, he tells us, the name of every writer, Pagan and Christian, in whose pages are portrayed the drawbacks and disadvantages domestic life presents to a man of genius and ambition. Cicero, Theophrastus, St. Paul, St. Jerome, all are pressed into the service to prove that a man cannot attend both to a wife and to philosophy. “Where is he,” she asks, “that, wishing to dedicate himself to meditations upon the Scriptures or upon philosophy, can put up with the cries of the nursery, the songs of the nurse that lulls a babe to sleep, the perpetual coming and going of domestics?” Rich men can sometimes avoid these interruptions and inconveniences; but philosophers are never rich, and she cites Seneca to convince him that she would be a chain round his neck, a tether to his feet. The title of lover would be more honorable and more safe for him; and as for her, she cares not what she is called, so long as he loves her. Her sole ambition is to retain his affection by tenderness, and not by worldly ties. Finding him unconvinced—for Abelard well knew that such arguments would have no weight with Fulbert—she declared, with sobs and tears, that it was the one step to be taken if they wanted to destroy their happiness and to prepare for themselves a sorrow as profound and lasting as their love. After recalling this outburst of tender desperation, he observes, with the fine tranquillity of a truly critical spirit, that Eloisa thereby demonstrated, as the whole world has since acknowledged, that she was endowed with the gift of prophecy!

In order to understand and appreciate what some persons will perhaps consider the perverse and even unfeminine expostulations of Eloisa, it must be remembered that, in the twelfth century, marriage was supposed to disqualify a man for a career of distinction. The celibacy of the clergy, for which Hildebrand had battled so unremittingly, was now definitively established, and all who aspired to employment in or about the precincts of the Church had to sanction, by their practice, the slur thus passed upon women. When Abelard first met Eloisa he was not an ecclesiastic. But he was saturated with ecclesiastic ideas; and if he was to pursue his study and exposition of Theology, he could do so only under episcopal protection, which would never have entrusted the defence of spiritual truths to one who had openly contracted a carnal union. It is easy to perceive what immense value Abelard attached to the recognition of his powers, and to the establishment of his fame; nor is there any difficulty in surmising that he often expatiated to Eloisa on a theme so interesting to them both. It has been said—

Man dreams of fame, but woman wakes to love.

But, waking or dreaming, Eloisa thought only of Abelard’s glory, Abelard’s advancement. Her secret, unacknowleged love was to feed his fame, as the hidden root and unnoticed tendrils feed the swelling trunk, impelling it into blossom and leaf and fruit. Well might Mr. Cousin declare, when a discussion was once raised as to who is the greatest woman that ever lived, that Eloisa towers above all competitors. But for the self-obliterating tenderness of her heart, the self-asserting strength of Abelard’s intellect would long since have been forgotten. Fancy a man worrying himself to death in order to establish that he is not heterodox in his views concerning the reality of Universals, while such a woman offers him, in her own particular person, the sum and abstract of all that is worth having in the world!

Yet, in some sort, Abelard expiated his faults. I fail to see in him the passionate champion of free thought, which De Rémusat and others sometimes appear disposed to represent him, or it would be more easy to extend to him the indulgence which, for that reason, has to be yielded to a tortuous egotist like Voltaire, or to a cold-hearted sentimentalist like Rousseau. As far as I can see, he entertained certain metaphysical opinions, which, whether sound or otherwise, are not of the smallest practical importance, and upon which the dignity and happiness of mankind in no degree turn. Accused of heresy, he was condemned; and the condemnation was peculiarly wounding to his vanity. But he made his peace with the Church, and in one of the latest of his letters to Eloisa is particularly anxious to convince her that he has done so. No doubt it was not easy to battle with the strongly-organized Theology of the times; but if anyone should ask what Abelard was to do when accused of heresy, the answer might be that of the mother of Horatius, who, when asked, “Que voulez vous qu’il fasse contre trois?” replied: “Qu’il mourût!” Eloisa had died a thousand times over for his sake. Could he not die once for his precious Universals and his tenets on the Trinity, if he really thought them true, and so very important!

No; the only hold he has upon our indulgence is that time and suffering at length awakened in his heart a tardy tenderness for Eloisa, and inspired him with something like an appreciation of her unrivalled goodness. He handed over to her his refuge of the Paraclete; and when she wrote to him for comfort, for counsel, for spiritual explanations, he did not withhold them. He could not be so blind, or so unmindful of the past, as not to read between the lines, and not to perceive that under the exposition of the difficulties she was experiencing in directing the community of which she had become the head, there still palpitated the recollection of the earliest instruction she had received at his hands. Then he expounded Ovid. Now he comments on the Scriptures. But the master was the same, and the same the pupil; and over and over again the Abbess of the Paraclete recalls the niece of Fulbert. We feel that she almost invents doubts, that she multiplies scruples, and that she entangles herself in perplexities, in order that he may solve them. In a word, she is as unchangeably in love with him as ever. He is measured and circumspect in his replies; but a certain vein of spiritual tenderness underlies them, and we feel that his nature has grown nobler, and his heart is, at last, less pre-occupied with self. Perhaps he had discerned now, when it was too late, the value of a woman’s love, and the worthlessness of worldly notoriety. Before he died, he begged that his body might be carried to the Paraclete. Thither, accordingly, it was secretly transported and lovingly interred by her who, as the Chronicle of Tours says, “_était veritablement son amie_.”

For twenty years more, Eloisa lived on, a model of sanctity and wisdom. Even Villon, in one of his ballads, speaks of her as “la très sage Heloïse.” When she died, her sole request was that she might be laid by the side of Abelard. Her injunction was obeyed; and as her body was being lowered into the grave, that of Abelard was for an instant reanimated, so tradition affirms, and he opened his arms to receive her.—_National Review._

THE UNITY OF THE EMPIRE.

BY THE MARQUIS OF LORNE.

Lord Beaconsfield called the English an enthusiastic people, and there is some danger that we may hastily infer that if our fit of enthusiasm for new schemes of Imperial Federation be not at once caught up by the colonies, a permanent union with them is impossible. It must be “either a closer union or disintegration,” say some. But let us not be too hasty in assuming that sudden developments are necessary.

If Mr. Goschen will allow us to say so, “after all” it is no bad thing that the Federation League should have been formed, although it may produce just now more “fads” than federation. The formation of the Society shows that men’s minds are alive to the value of the colonies. It is to be hoped that there will be less said of drawing “the bonds between us and our children closer,” and more of confirming their position where satisfactory, and of securing their commercial aims. The position of a listening and helpful friend should be ours, rather than that of a dictatorial parent. Where colonists have spoken of federation, they have often meant reciprocity in trade. Where Englishmen have spoken of it, they have often meant only colonial contribution to common defence. Our long-established trade has taught us that defence means defence of trade-interests, wherever they lead. Our sons’ minds have been more set on creating industries at home, and they have hardly begun to think of wars which come from opening new markets. Although the different lines of thought lead to the same conclusion, namely, organised union for common interests, we may be somewhat premature in laying down plans for Imperial co-operation. They who have as yet spoken of these plans are, for the most part, British politicians. It is, however, significant that the Prime Minister of Canada was present at a meeting of the “Imperial Federation League,” and gave a general promise of Canadian aid in any “wars of defence.” It remains to be seen how far Canada would be willing to impose a permanent charge on her Treasury for other than home defence. As yet she has had too much to do in developing public works to attain to more than the maintenance, in a poorly organised and badly officered condition, of a force of about 20,000, out of a nominal roll of 40,000 militia, whose fine physique and great individual intelligence make them worth a great deal more than their small numbers imply. She has shown that she looks to England to do armed marine duty for her, and she is not desirous to garrison her one important fortress near her Atlantic coaling stations—namely, Halifax. But she is showing her knowledge of her inadequate military condition, and is training officers and is voting larger sums for the annual drilling of the militia. Her population, expanding over vast surfaces, is being strengthened both for civil and military cohesion by a thorough railway system; but she will need all the consciousness her best men have, that defence means preparation and organisation, if she wishes to inspire respect for her ever-increasing and ever more vulnerable possessions. One of her statesmen, formerly her High Commissioner to England, has suggested that a tonnage duty, levied on all ships sailing under the British flag, be devoted to fortification of coaling stations. It is to be feared that the shipowning provinces of the Dominion would object to this excellent proposal, although it might meet with the approval of those who are less directly interested in marine property, and would be an indirect tax which might commend itself to inland provinces and to some of the Australian colonies.