True, the young prig who lectured his seniors upon Ezekiel survives in the middle-aged prig (how curiously like certain Anglican priests to-day) who points out to his fellow monks of Saint-Denis that their founder may not, after all, have been the Areopagite; but the young cocksure who confuted William of Champeaux and laughed in the venerable beard of Anselm has dwindled into a querulous craven, constantly in terror of persecution, poison and the rest, magnifying his dangers with a buoyant
to his correspondent's natural anxiety, and piteously appealing to her for an eventual Christian burial.
The Letters of Abelard and Heloise - 1st Letter
