Letter To My Husband Analysis

To her master, nay father, to her husband, nay brother; his handmaid, nay daughter, his spouse, nay sister: to ABELARD, HELOISE.
Your letter written to a friend for his comfort, beloved, was lately brought to me by chance. Seeing at once from the title that it was yours, I began the more ardently to read it in that the writer was so dear to me, that I might at least be refreshed by his words as by a picture of him whose presence I have lost. Almost every line of that letter, I remember, was filled with gall and wormwood, to wit those that related the miserable story of our conversion, and your unceasing crosses, my all.
You didst indeed fulfil in that letter what at the beginning of it you hadst promised your friend, namely that in comparison with your troubles he should
For of this place you, after God, art the sole founder, the sole architect of this oratory, the sole builder of this congregation. Nothing didst you build here on the foundations of others. All that is here is your creation. This wilderness, ranged only by wild beasts or by robbers, had known no habitation of men, had contained no dwelling. In the very lairs of the beasts, in the very lurking places of the robbers, where the name of God is not heard, you didst erect a divine tabernacle, and didst dedicate the Holy Ghost's own temple. Nothing didst you borrow from the wealth of kings or princes, when you couldst have obtained so much and from so many, that whatsoever was wrought here might be ascribed to you alone. Clerks or scholars flocking in haste to your teaching ministered to you all things needful, and they who lived upon ecclesiastical benefices, who knew not how to make but only how to receive oblations, and had hands for receiving, not for giving, became lavish and importunate here in the offering of