Capitolo 39
it would bring the bitter and durable pain to my relative and my friends,
and as the history of this amazing outrage it would scatter to the very
thin of the earth.
What run did it place opens since then in then to me? As it was able me I hold again never on
my head among men, when every finger should be sharpened to me in
contempts, every language speaks my fierce shame, and when I should be
a monstrous show to all the eyes? I was submerged by the
I remember that, according to the letter feared of the law God,
eunuchs of the takings in such disgust that men have mutilated so I am
prevented for entering a church, also as the I dirty and gross; no,
also beasts in such appointment were not acceptable as sacrifices. This way
in Leviticus (the xxii, 24) it is it said: "Ye won't offer to the
God that what hath that its stones have hurt, or it crushed, or broken, or
cut." And in Deuteronomy (the xxiii, 1), "Him that is wounded in the
stones or hath street which its private member has cut, won't enter the
the God's congregation."
I have to confess that in my uneasiness it was the oppressive sense of
my dishonor rather than some ardours for conversion to the religious
life that has driven me to look for the isolation of the monastic cloister.
Heloise already had, to my offer, taken the veil and entered a
convent. This way it was that us both I handed the sacred attire, me in the
abbey of St. Denis and her in the convent of Argenteuil of what
I have already spoken. You, I remember well, when his/her affectionate friends
vainly tried to dissuade her/it to submit his/her fresh youth to the
heavy joke and almost intolerable of the monastic life, sobbing and
crying responded in the words of Cornelia:
"... Husband of Or more noble,
Who ne'er shouldst have divided my couch! It has the fortune such power
To hit so tall a head? Because then it was me I got married
Only to bring thee to the pain? Now receives my pain,
The price that I pay so gladly."
(Lucan, "Pharsalia", viii, 94.)
With these words on his/her lips she immediately went to the altar, and