They used to place chiselled urns on graves and paint everybody in a flowing cloak, and with long hair; then Corinne sang to the accompaniment of her lyre beside Oswald, who wore Russian boots; and it was thought proper to have everybody's head adorned with a profusion of dishevelled locks and to have a multitude of ruins in every landscape.
This style of embellishment abounds throughout La Garenne.

There is a temple erected to Vesta, and directly opposite it another erected to Friendship....
Inscriptions, artificial rocks, factitious ruins, are scattered lavishly, with artlessness and conviction....

But the poetical riches centre in the grotto of Heloise, a sort of natural dolmen on the bank of the Sevre.
Why have people made Heloise, who was such a great and noble figure, appear commonplace and silly, the prototype of all crossed loves and the narrow ideal of sentimental schoolgirls?
The unfortunate mistress of the great Abelard deserved a better fate, for she loved him with devoted admiration, although he was hard and taciturn at times and spared her neither bitterness nor blows.

She dreaded offending him more than she dreaded offending God, and strove harder to please him.

She did not wish him to marry her, because she thought that "it was wrong and deplorable that the one whom nature had created for all ...