Pascal’s health, we have seen, was very delicate. His labours to perfect his arithmetical machine had seriously impaired it. The attack of partial paralysis, described by his niece, seems to have taken place in the early summer of 1647. As soon as he was able, he removed to Paris, where we find him settled with his younger sister in September of the same year. It was on the twenty-fifth of this month that Jacqueline writes from Paris of Descartes’s memorable visits. One of the motives of his change of residence was no doubt to consult the best physicians of the day; and Descartes, who, amongst his other numerous gifts, had some skill in medicine, made his second visit to him partly as a physician. “He came in part,” says Jacqueline, “to consult as to my brother’s illness.” He appears to have given him very sound advice, which, unfortunately, Pascal did not follow—“to lie in bed as much as he could, and take strong soup.” On the contrary, he was “bled, bathed, and purged,” after the usual medical routine of the time, apparently without any good effects, or any alleviation of his sufferings.

The father also returned to Paris in May 1648. The Provincial Parliament, with regained authority, had exacted the recall of the Intendants appointed by the Court. Étienne Pascal’s services were remunerated by the dignity of a Counsellor of State, and he was set at liberty to rejoin his children. It was at this period that the struggle took place betwixt father and daughter as to the latter’s determination to choose a religious life. Encouraged by her brother after his access of zeal at Rouen, Jacqueline was gradually more and more drawn towards piety. After their settlement in Paris they went frequently together to the Church of Port Royal de Paris, to listen to the sermons of M. Singlin, whose touching pictures of the beauty and perfection of the Christian life awoke in the youthful enthusiast the desire of entering Port Royal. She opened personal communications with the sainted head of the House, the MÈre AngÉlique, and also with M. Singlin, who recognised in her all the marks of a true vocation, but who would not allow her to proceed further without her father’s consent and approval. The brother at this time strongly sympathised with her aspirations, and favoured them. On the father’s arrival in Paris, the design of his daughter was imparted to him. He was greatly surprised and moved by the proposition—pleased, on the one hand, by his daughter’s devotion, and yet deeply wounded by the idea of parting with her. He took time for consideration, and at length made up his mind that it was impossible to give his consent. Not only so, but he strongly blamed his son, who had broken the matter to him, for encouraging his sister’s design without first ascertaining whether it would be agreeable to himself, and he seems for the time to have felt so much distrust in them both, that he instructed an old domestic, who had been with them from their youth, to watch over their actions. This is the narrative of Madame PÉrier; [54a] and the unpleasantness which arose out of this event appears also implied in Jacqueline’s letter to her sister in the spring of the same year. [54b]

In 1649 the Pascal family left Paris for Auvergne, and seem to have remained there for about a year and a half. Madame PÉrier says nothing of this visit, so far as her brother is concerned, beyond the fact that he accompanied Jacqueline and her father. The likelihood, however, is, that the visit was in some degree prompted by a regard for Pascal’s health. He had made in Paris some progress towards recovery, notwithstanding the severity of his treatment. But he was still far from well, and it was judged necessary, “in order to re-establish him entirely, that he should abandon every sort of mental occupation, and seek, as much as he could, opportunities of amusing himself.” Her brother, she adds, was very reluctant to take this advice, “because he saw its danger.” At length, however, he yielded, “considering himself obliged to do all he could to restore his health, and because he thought that trivial amusements could not harm him. So he set himself on the world.” When this definite change in Pascal’s life began is left uncertain, but there are indications that he had largely abandoned his studies in 1649 and the following year. During these years there is nothing from his pen. The interval between the “recital” of the experiments on the Puy de DÔme (1648), and his letter to M. Ribeyre, 12th July 1651, is blank in any record of scientific or literary labour. This is not conclusive, of course, that he was idle; but taken in connection with the remarks of his sister, and the retirement to Auvergne, it suggests that the family may have sought there, in rural isolation and domestic reunion, the means of entirely withdrawing Pascal from his severer studies, and the scientific companions who were constantly prompting them in Paris. It may be, also, that the father sought the means of withdrawing Jacqueline from the neighbourhood of Port Royal, and from the equally exciting associations to her connected with that neighbourhood.

Of Pascal’s life at this time in Auvergne we know nothing, or next to nothing. There is, indeed, a single trace, of which the most has been made, in the Memoirs of FlÉchier, describing his stay at Clermont in 1665 and 1666, a few years after Pascal’s death. In these Memoirs, FlÉchier relates an anecdote of a young lady “who was the Sappho of the country,” and greatly beloved by all the beaux esprits of the time. Amongst others, “M. Pascal, who had then acquired so much reputation, and another savant, were continually with this belle savante.” It is difficult to know what to make of this vague if piquant anecdote. Some of Pascal’s more religious admirers have even been scandalised by it, and have tried to show that it could not refer to the author of the ‘PensÉes.’ M. Cousin and other parties have emphasised it too much. [55] There seems no reason to doubt that the anecdote relates to the younger Pascal—it cannot reasonably be supposed to relate to his father. Nor is there any ground to suppose that Pascal was less likely to be interested in a beautiful and accomplished demoiselle than any other young man of his age. On the contrary, there is some reason to think him at this time peculiarly susceptible to the charms of female companionship. The passing glimpse which the story gives of his occupations in Auvergne, and the comparative brightness and leisure in which it seems to set his life for a little, are pleasing. It suggests the idea that the change to the country had worked successfully, and that with rest and retirement from Paris his health had greatly benefited.

It is a very different picture we get of the once brilliant Jacqueline. If her father had cherished any hopes of restoring her again to the world, he was destined to disappointment. With her conversion at Rouen, and her association with M. Singlin and Port Royal, her old life seems entirely to have died out. Even her old pleasure in making verses was renounced at the bidding of Port Royal. She was told “that it was a talent of which God would not take any account—it was necessary to bury it,” and this although she only exerted it now in the service of religion and the Church. While Madame PÉrier has given us no details, and, indeed, no facts whatever, of her brother’s life at this time, she has given us a minute picture of Jacqueline’s austerities. In everything save in name she had already become a nun. She wore a dress approaching as nearly as possible to a religious habit; she fasted and kept vigils; she spent her whole time either in the house alone, absorbed in religious ecstasy, or abroad in works of active charity; in every way she made it plainly to be known that it was only her father’s wish that kept her in the world at all.

After a stay in Auvergne of seventeen months, the family returned to Paris in November 1650. There we still read of the pious labours and devotion of Jacqueline—little or nothing of her brother. How far the leisure of country life may have weaned him from his old pursuits, how far the world had begun to exercise a new attraction over him, we learn nothing. It is evident from his letter to M. PÉrier on his father’s death, nearly a year after this, that he still cherished strongly his religious convictions. Yet there is nothing in all this time to tell of his religious profession; and Madame PÉrier plainly does not care to dwell upon it, but hurries forward to the later and more edifying period of his career. The impression is left upon us that worldly distractions had already begun to influence his life.

These distractions rapidly acquired force after the father’s death in the autumn of 1651 (September). The devoted Jacqueline attended his last moments with assiduous tenderness; but no sooner was the event over than she renewed her determination to enter Port Royal. The issue cannot be so well described as in Madame PÉrier’s words:—

“Being ill,” she says, “I was unable to leave Paris till the end of November. In this interval, my brother, who was greatly afflicted, and had received much consolation from my sister, imagined that her affection would make her remain with him at least a year. . . . He spoke to her on the subject, but in such a manner as to convey the impression that she would not so far contradict him for fear of redoubling his grief. This led her to dissemble her intention till our arrival. Then she told me that her resolution was fixed to adopt a religious life as soon as our respective shares [of the father’s property] were arranged. She would, however, spare my brother by leading him to suppose she only meditated a retreat! With this view, she disposed of everything in my presence; our shares were settled on the last day of December; and she fixed upon the 4th of January for carrying out her decision. On the evening before, she begged me to say something to my brother, that he might not be taken by surprise. I did so with all the precaution I could; but although I hinted that it was only a retreat, with the view of knowing something of the sort of life, he did not fail to be deeply touched. He withdrew very sad to his chamber without seeing my sister, who was then in a small cabinet where she was accustomed to retire for prayer. She did not come out till my brother had left, as she feared his look would go to her heart. I told her for him what words of tenderness he had spoken; and after that we both retired. Though I consented with all my heart to what my sister was doing, because I thought it was for her the highest good, the greatness of her resolution astonished and occupied my mind so that I could not sleep all night. At seven o’clock, when I saw that my sister was not up, I concluded that she was no longer sleeping, and feared that she might be ill. Accordingly, I went to her bed, where I found her still fast asleep. The noise I made awoke her; she asked me what o’clock it was. I told her; and having inquired how she was, and if she had slept well, she said she was very well, and that she had slept excellently. So she rose, dressed, and went away, doing this, as everything else, with a tranquillity and equanimity inconceivable. We said no adieu for fear of breaking down. I only turned aside when I saw her ready to go. In this manner she quitted the world on the 4th January 1652, being then exactly twenty-six years and three months old.” [58]

Our readers will not grudge this extract, so touching in its simplicity. What a living picture does it give us of this remarkable family!—the elder sister’s wakeful anxiety—the younger’s calm determination—the brother’s half-suppressed yet deeply-moved tenderness—the proud and sensitive reserve of all the three. Jacqueline’s firmness was heroic, but her heart was full of concern. She had escaped the half-authoritative, half-supplicating entreaties of her brother, and found refuge for her long-cherished solicitudes of heart in the bosom of Port Royal, and the strong counsels both of the MÈre AngÉlique and the MÈre AgnÈs. But after a while this did not satisfy her. When the time came to make her profession, she was anxious to do so, not merely with her own consent, but with her brother’s. And accordingly, she addressed him in the following March a remarkable letter, in which, while reminding him that she was her own mistress to do as she wished in a matter so seriously affecting her life, she yet prayed him to give her a kindly greeting in her solemn act, and to come to the ceremony of her taking the vows. The letter breathes at once the affection of a sister and the passion of a saint,—the proud firmness so characteristic of the family, with a charming sweetness, blending entreaty with command. She signs herself already “Sister of Sainte EuphÉmie,” the name which she adopted as an inmate of Port Royal, addressing her brother for the most part with the grave formal “you,” but now and then relapsing into the old familiar “thou,” as if she were still in the family home.

“Do not take that away,” she says, [59] “which you cannot give. If it is true that the world has preserved some impressions of the friendship which it showed for me when I was with it, please God this should not turn me from quitting it, nor you from consenting to my doing so. This ought rather to be my glory, and your joy, and that of all my true friends, as showing the strength of my God, and that it is not the world which quits me, but I that quit the world, and that the effort which it makes to retain me is to be regarded as only a visible punishment of the complacency with which I formerly regarded it, and which it now pleases God to give me power to resist. . . . Do not hinder those who do well; and do well yourself; or if you have not the strength to follow me, at least do not hold me back. Do not render me ungrateful to God for the grace which He has given to one whom you love. . . . I wait this proof of your brotherly friendship, and pray you to come to my divine betrothal, which will take place, God helping, on Trinity Sunday. I wrote also to my faithful one [her sister Gilberte]. I beg you to console her, if there is need, and encourage her. It is only for the sake of form that I ask you to be present at the ceremony; for I do not believe you have any thought of failing me. Be assured that I must renounce you if you do.”

The result of this moving appeal was to bring her brother to her side.

“He came the following day very much put out,” she says, “with a bad headache, the result of my letter, yet also very much softened, for instead of the two years which he had formerly insisted on, he wished me merely to wait till All Saints’ Day. But seeing me firm not to delay, yet willing to give him some further time to think over the matter, he melted entirely, and expressed pity for the trouble which had made me delay so long a result which I had so long and so ardently desired. He did not return at the appointed time; but M. d’Andilly, at my request, had the goodness to send for him on Saturday, and undertook the matter with so much warmth, and yet skill, that he consented to everything we wished.” [60]

Jacqueline gained her point so far; but painful difficulties still remained, the story of which she herself has also told us. [61] While eager to be admitted to the full privileges of her vocation, she did not wish to enter Port Royal empty-handed. She thought herself free to endow it with the share of her father’s fortune which had fallen to her, and seems not to have doubted her brother’s and sister’s concurrence in this act of liberality. But they, on the contrary, were both for a time deeply offended that she should apparently prefer strangers to her own kindred. They took the matter “in an entirely secular manner.” This greatly grieved her in turn; and, balked at once in her wishes and her sisterly trust, she pictures in the most lively colours the distress she endured. La MÈre AgnÈs consoled her in her disappointment, and sought to carry her thoughts beyond the mere chagrin which so obviously mingled with her higher feeling. Her own somewhat resentful obstinacy gradually yielded to the pure passivity of resignation—so strong in its seeming weakness—which the sister of Arnauld preached to her. At length she is content to make no further demands upon her brother. He and Madame PÉrier shall do as they wish; the money would not be blessed unless it came from free hearts, and was given for the love of God. She is willing even to be received gratuitously as a sister—a feeling evidently not without its bitterness. Her submission became, as may be guessed, her triumph; a result probably not unforeseen by the deeper experience of La MÈre AgnÈs and M. Singlin.

When her brother—“he who had most interest in the affair”—at last came to see her, she endeavoured to meet him as the Mother advised. “But, with all her effort” she could not hide the sadness of her heart.

“This,” she says, “was so unlike my usual manner, that he perceived it at once; and there was no need of an interpreter to explain the cause, for though I put on the best face I could, he easily guessed that it was his own conduct which was the cause of my uneasiness. All the same, he was desirous of making the first complaint; and then I learned that both he and my sister felt themselves much aggrieved by what I had written. He dwelt on this, but could hardly go on, seeing I made no complaint on my side. Otherwise, I could have destroyed by a single word all his reasons!”

A true family trait! The result of all was, that Pascal yielded to the tender resignation of his sister what he had refused to her arguments. He was so “touched,” she says, “with confusion, that he resolved to put the whole affair in order,” and to undertake himself any risks or charges that it might involve.

But the heads of the House required to be satisfied, no less than Jacqueline. They were not disposed to accept any gift which was not freely and piously given. Accordingly, before the final disposition of the property was made, La MÈre AngÉlique took care that Pascal should understand the matter anew from the Port-Royalist point of view. St Cyran had taught them that they were never “to receive anything for the house of God but that which came from God.” Even he was not a little surprised, according to the statement of his sister, at all this scrupulousness—“the manner in which we deal with such matters;” and the men of business whose presence was necessary on the occasion are represented as astonished beyond measure. “They had never seen business done in such a way.” At length, however, all was completed. Pascal professed the genuineness of his motives, and only regretted that it was not in his power to do more.

If this narrative mainly concerns Jacqueline Pascal, it serves to throw light upon the character and life of her brother at this time. In the course of her “relation,” Jacqueline, or her interlocutor La MÈre AgnÈs, makes frequent allusion to Pascal’s “worldly life.” When she is vexed that he will not carry out her desires in the matter of the dowry, she is reminded that she had far more reason to be distressed by the “faults and infidelities” into which he had fallen towards God. [63a] He is represented as being so much engrossed with the vanities and amusements of the world as to prefer his own pleasure and advantage to the good of a religious community or the pious gratification of his sister. It was only by some miracle that it could be otherwise; and there was no reason to “expect a miracle of grace in a person like him.” [63b] All the means at his command were hardly sufficient to enable him to live in the world “like others of his condition,” and the associates with whom he was known to be mingling. [63c]

Plainly at this time Pascal was abandoned by Port Royal. He had “set himself,” as his sister briefly says, “on the world.” As his niece more particularly indicates, [63d] he had given himself up to the amusements of life. Unable to study, the love of leisure and of fashionable society had gradually gained upon him. At first he was moderate in his worldly enjoyments; but a taste for them insensibly sprang up and carried him far away from his old associations and the pious severities of his former life. After his father’s death this change was more clearly marked. He was master of his own affairs, and he plunged more freely into the pleasures of society, although always, it is distinctly said, “without any vice or licentiousness.” All this, his niece adds, was very grievous to her aunt Jacqueline, who grieved in spirit at seeing him who had been the means of making her learn the nothingness of the world return to its vanities.

Too much is not to be made of such statements, or the still stronger expressions of Jacqueline herself in her letters regarding her brother’s final conversion. When she speaks of “wretched attachments” binding him to the world, and of his being still “haunted by the smell of the mud which he had embraced with such empressement,” [64] we are to remember that she speaks not only out of the severity of her own youthful judgment, (and what judgment is so severe at times as that of youth?) but out of the mouth of Port Royal. She condemns a world which was no doubt bad enough, but of which she knew nothing. Her allusions to the “grandeur” of her brother’s life and similar indications have led Sainte-Beuve and others to speak of his extravagance at this time. He is supposed not only to have lived in the world, but to have lived in a style above his means—the companion of men of higher social position than himself, profuse in their habits and expenditure. That he lived in the midst of society of this kind can hardly be doubted. It is more doubtful how far his own habits had become those of an extravagant man of the world. His chief companion was one who remained bound to him through all the rest of his life, Pascal’s influence having drawn him also from the world when the time of his own change came. This was the Duc de Roannez, a young man of fewer years than himself, who seems to have possessed many attractive qualities. He was devoted to Pascal—could hardly “bear him out of his sight,” as Marguerite PÉrier says—and Pascal warmly returned his friendship. It seems as if they had lived together a good deal, or at least that Pascal spent the most of his time with the young Duke; and it was in his house and society no doubt that he tasted the joys and perils of that fashionable and luxurious life of which his sister speaks so bitterly. [65a] It was a life, after all, of thoughtless enjoyment rather than of any deeper folly. Both men were as yet very young—the Duke only twenty-two years of age, and Pascal twenty-eight. After his simple and severe training, and the society of his Jansenist friends, it must have been a change full of excitement, possibly of moral danger, to the once enthusiastic student; for the society of the time was charged with the elements both of sceptical and moral indifference. It has been even said that “no society was ever more grandly dissolute” than that of the Fronde, “when women like La Barette [65b] and La Couronne took the lead in the least discreet pleasures.”

Among the men whom Pascal evidently met at the hotel of the Duc de Roannez, and with whom he formed something of a friendship, was the well-known Chevalier de MÉrÉ, whom we know best as a tutor of Madame de Maintenon, and whose graceful but flippant letters still survive as a picture of the time. He was a gambler and libertine, yet with some tincture of science and professed interest in its progress. In his correspondence there is a letter to Pascal, in which he makes free in a somewhat ridiculous manner with the young geometrician already so distinguished. Other names still less reputable—those of Miton and Desbarreaux, for example—have been associated with Pascal during this period. Miton was undoubtedly an intimate ally of De MÉrÉ, and amidst all his dissoluteness, made pretensions to scientific knowledge and attainments as a writer. Desbarreaux was a companion of both, but of a still lower grade—a man of open profligacy, and a despiser of the rites of the Church. Along with Miton and other boon companions, he is spoken of as betaking himself to St Cloud for carnival during the Holy Week. [66] The truth would seem to be that all these men came across Pascal’s path at this time, and were more or less known to him. His allusions to both Miton and Desbarreaux in the PensÉes imply this. There is a certain familiarity of knowledge indicated in the very heartiness with which he assails them—speaking of Miton as “hateful,” [67a] and of Desbarreaux as having renounced reason and made himself a “brute.” [67b] But it is against all probability, no less than against all the facts known to us, to suppose that Pascal had more connection with such men than meeting them in the society in which he moved during these years, and becoming well acquainted with the intellectual and moral atmosphere which they breathed. It may be too much to say, with FaugÈre, that he was then consciously imbibing the experience to be afterwards utilised in his great work, or that it was the principles professed by these men which gave him the first idea of such a work; but we may certainly say that the knowledge of them, as well as all the knowledge he acquired at this time, served to deepen and extend his moral intuitions, and to give a finer point to many of his Thoughts. And no student of Pascal can doubt that “if his feet touched for a moment the dirt of this dissolute society, his divine wings remained unsoiled.” [67c]

A more interesting point than any, however, still remains in connection with this period of his life. It was now, or soon after, that Pascal must have composed the “Discours sur les Passions de l’Amour,” one of the most exquisite fragments which have come from his pen,—remarkable both in itself and in the circumstances of its discovery by M. Cousin about thirty years ago. M. Cousin has himself related these circumstances in minute detail, and with a certain self-elation. [67d] According to M. FaugÈre, there was no particular difficulty, and therefore no particular merit, in the discovery. The fragment was clearly indexed in a catalogue of the Pascal MSS. in the well-known State library of Paris as follows: “Discours sur les Passions de l’Amour, par M. Pascal,” and again in the body of the volume the fragment was entitled, “Discours, etc., on l’attribue À M. Pascal.” The genuineness of the fragment seems admitted on all hands. “In the first line,” says Cousin, “I felt Pascal, and my conviction of its authorship grew as I proceeded—his ardent and lofty manner, half thought, half passion, and that speech so fine and grand, an accent which I would recognise amongst a thousand.” [68a] “The soul and thought of Pascal,” says FaugÈre, “shine everywhere in the pages, steeped in a melancholy at once chaste and ardent.” [68b]

The following extracts may give some idea of this remarkable paper. It commences in an abstract, aphoristic manner not uncommon with Pascal:—

“Man is born to think; he is never a moment without thinking. But pure thought, which, if it could be sustained, would make him happy, fatigues and prostrates him. He could not live a life of mere thought; movement and action are necessary to him. He must be agitated by the passions, whose sources he feels deep and strong in his heart. The passions most characteristic of man, and which embrace most others, are love and ambition. They have no affinity, yet they are often united; together, they tend to weaken if not destroy each other. For however grand the human spirit, it is only capable at once of one great passion. When love and ambition meet, each therefore falls short of what it would otherwise be. Age determines neither the beginning nor the end of these two passions. They are born with the first years, they continue often to the last.”

“Man finds no full scope for love in himself, yet he loves. It is necessary, therefore, for him to seek an object of love elsewhere. This he can only find in beauty. But as he himself is the most beautiful creature that God has made, he must find in himself the type of that beauty which he seeks elsewhere. This defines and embodies itself in the difference of sex. A woman is the highest form of beauty. Endowed with mind, she is its living and marvellous personation. If a beautiful woman wishes to please, she will always succeed. The fascinations of beauty in such a case never fail to captivate, whatever man may do to resist them. There is a spot in every heart which they reach.”

“Love is of no age; it is always being born. The poets tell us so, and hence we represent it as a child. It creates intelligence, and feeds upon intelligence. . . . We exhaust our power of gratifying it every day, and yet every day it is necessary to renew its gratification.”

“Man in solitude is an incomplete being; he needs companionship for happiness. He seeks this commonly in a like condition with his own, because habits of desire and opportunity in such a case are most readily found by him. But sometimes he fixes his affections on an object far beyond his rank, and the flame burns the more intensely that he is forced to conceal it in his own bosom. When we love one of elevated condition, ambition may at first coexist with affection. But love soon becomes the master. It is a tyrant which suffers no rival; it must reign alone. Every other emotion must subserve and obey its dictates. A high attachment fills the heart more completely than a common and equal one. Small things are carried away in the great capacity of love.”

“The pleasure of loving, without daring to say anything of one’s love, has its pains, but also its sweetnesses. With what transport do we regulate all our actions with the view of pleasing one whom we infinitely value! . . . The fulness of love sometimes languishes, receiving no succour from the beloved object. Then we fall into misery; and hostile passions, lying in wait for the heart, tear it in a thousand pieces. But anon a ray of hope—the very least it may be—raises us as high as ever. Sometimes this comes from mere dalliance, but sometimes also from an honest pity. How happy such a moment when it comes!”

“The first effect of love is to inspire a great respect. We revere whom we really love. This is right, and we know nothing in the world so grand as this. . . . In love we forget fortune, parents, friends, and the reason of this is that we imagine we need nothing else than the object of our love. The heart is full; there is no room for care nor disquietude. Passion is then necessarily in excess; there is a plenitude in it which resists the commencement of reflection. Yet love and reason are not to be opposed, and love has always reason with it, although it implies a precipitation of thought which carries us away without due examination. Otherwise we should be very disagreeable machines. Do not exclude reason from love, therefore; they are truly inseparable. The poets are wrong in representing love as blind. It is necessary to take away his veil, and give him henceforth the joy of sight.”

“It is not merely the result of custom, but a dictate of nature, that man should make the first advances in love. . . . Great souls require an inundation of passion to disturb and fill them; but when they begin to love, they love supremely. . . . When we are away from the object of our love we resolve to do and say many things, but when we are present we hesitate. The explanation is, that at a distance the reason is undisturbed, but in presence of the beloved object it is strangely moved. In love we fear to hazard lest we lose all. It is necessary to advance, yet who can tell to what point? We tremble always till we reach this point, and yet prudence does not help us to keep it when we have found it. . . . There is nothing so embarrassing as to be in love, and see something in our favour without daring to believe in it. Hope and fear rage within us, and the last too often triumphs.”

The question arises, What interpretation are we to put on these chaste yet glowing sentences? It seems hardly possible to believe that they were not penned out of some real experience. Pascal was not the man to busy himself in writing an imaginary essay on such a subject. Nothing can be conceived less like the sketch of a mere moral analyst standing outside the passion he describes. There may be a tendency here and there to over-analysis, and to the balancing of antitheses now on one side and now on the other; but there is the breath of true passion all through the piece, and touching, as with fire, many of its many fine utterances. Who was then, conceivably, the object of Pascal’s affections? We have it on the authority of his niece that at this time, when he lived so much as the companion of the Duc de Roannez, he contemplated marrying and settling in the world. [71] This, and the indications of the piece itself, have led to the conjecture that he was in love with the sister of his friend. Charlotte Gouffier de Roannez was then about sixteen years of age, endowed with captivating graces of form and manner, animated by a sweet intelligence and by that charm of spiritual sympathy so likely to prove attractive to a man like Pascal. Occupying rooms in the house of his friend, who, we have seen, could not bear him out of his sight, Pascal and Mademoiselle de Roannez were necessarily much in each other’s society. What so natural as that he should fall in love, and overlooking all disparity of rank, cherish the secret hope of a union with one so gifted and beautiful?—or why may not ambition have mingled with his love, as he himself implies, and carried him for a time into a dreamland from which all shadows fell away?

It is impossible to do more than form conjectures in such a matter. To M. FaugÈre nothing seems more probable. M. Cousin resents the supposition as derogatory to Pascal, and as utterly inconsistent with the usages of the age of Louis XIV. But even were it impossible, according to the usages of the time, that Pascal should have ever married Mademoiselle de Roannez, this is no proof that he may not have fallen in love with her. There is much in this paper that favours the idea, that while Pascal loved deeply he yet never told his love; and the social obstacles, which for a time may have seemed to him surmountable, at last may have shut out all hope from his heart. Many causes might unite to do this, even supposing his love was returned. It is certain that he continued the warm friend, not only of the Duc de Roannez, but of his sister; and in after-years a correspondence was established betwixt them implying the highest degree of mutual esteem and confidence. We have only the letters of Pascal; nothing is known of those of Mademoiselle de Roannez; the rigidity of the Jansenist copyists have given us only extracts even of the former. All trace of earthly passion, if it ever existed, has gone from the pious page in which the Jansenist saint sets forth his exhortations. Yet it argues no common interest, that Pascal should pause in the midst of his conflict with the Jesuits to advise and direct his former companion; and FaugÈre professes that even before he had read the ‘Discours’ he could trace a “tender solicitude”—more than the mere impulse of Christian charity—beneath all the grave severity of his religious phrases.

The fate of Mademoiselle de Roannez was not a happy one. After vacillating for some time between the cloister and the world—obeying the guidance of Pascal, either directly or through Madame PÉrier, and even passing through her novitiate at Port Royal with “extraordinary fervour”—she was persuaded to marry and become the Duchesse de la Feuillade. But her marriage proved unfortunate. Her children died young; her own health broke down; she herself at length died under an operation, bequeathing a legacy to Port Royal, which had remained entwined with all dearest associations. Whether Pascal and she had loved each other or not, this sacred Home bound their best thoughts together, and serves to recall their highest aspirations.

It falls to us now to describe how Port Royal claimed the heart of Pascal, and called forth the chief activities of his remaining years.