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Rh though somewhat troublesome intendancy of Rouen. The family accordingly removed to the Norman capital, though Gilberte Pascal shortly after, on her marriage, returned to Clermont. At Rouen they became acquainted with Corneille, and Blaise pursued his studies with such vehemence that he already showed signs of an injured constitution. Nothing, however, of importance happened till the year 1646. Then Pascal the elder was confined to the house by the consequences of an accident on the ice, and was visited by certain gentlemen of the neighbourhood who had come under the influence of Saint-Cyran and the Jansenists. It does not appear that up to this time the Pascal family had been contemners of religion, but they now eagerly embraced the creed, or at least the attitude of Jansenism, and Pascal himself showed his zeal by informing against the supposed unorthodoxy of a Capuchin, the Père Saint-Ange.

His bodily health was at this time very far from satisfactory, and he appears to have suffered, not merely from acute dyspepsia, but from a kind of paralysis. He was, however, indefatigable in his mathematical work. In 1647 he published his Nouvelles expériences sur le vide, and in the next year the famous experiment with the barometer on the Puy de Dome was carried out for him by his brother-in-law Perier, and repeated on a smaller scale by himself at Paris, to which place by the end of 1647 he and his sister Jacqueline had removed, to be followed shortly by their father. In a letter of Jacqueline’s, dated the 27th of September, an account of a visit paid by Descartes to Pascal is given, which, like the other information on the relations of the two, give strong suspicion of mutual jealousy. Descartes, however, gave Pascal the very sensible advice to stay in bed as long as he could (it may be remembered that the philosopher himself never got up till eleven) and to take plenty of beef-tea. As early as May 1648 Jacqueline Pascal was strongly drawn to Port Royal, and her brother frequently accompanied her to its church. She desired indeed to join the convent, but her father, who returned to Paris with the dignity of counsellor of state, disapproved of the plan, and took both brother and sister to Clermont, where Pascal remained for the greater part, of two years. E. Fléchier, in his account of the Grands Jours at Clermont many years after, speaks of a “belle savante” in whose company Pascal had frequently been—a trivial mention on which, as on many other trivial points of scantily known lives, the most childish structures of comment and conjecture have been based. It is sufficient to say that at this time, despite the Rouen “conversion,” there is no evidence to show that Pascal was in any way a recluse, an ascetic, or in short anything but a young man of great intellectual promise and performance, not indifferent to society, but of weak health. He, his sister and their father returned to Paris in the late autumn of 1650, and in September of the next year Étienne Pascal died. Almost immediately afterwards Jacqueline fulfilled her purpose of joining Port Royal—a proceeding which led to some soreness, finally healed, between herself and her brother and sister as to the disposal of her property. It has sometimes been supposed that Pascal, from 1651 or earlier to the famous accident of 1654, lived a dissipated, extravagant, worldly, luxurious (though admittedly not vicious) life with his friend the duc de Roannez and others. His Discours sur les passions de l’amour, a striking and characteristic piece, not very long since discovered and printed, has also been assigned to this period, and has been supposed to indicate a hopeless passion for Charlotte de Roannez, the duke’s sister. But this is sheer romancing. The extant letters of Pascal to the lady show no trace of any affection (stronger than friendship) between them. It is, however, certain that in the autumn of 1654 Pascal’s second “conversion” took place, and that it was lasting. He betook himself at first to Port Royal, and began to live a recluse and austere life there. Mme Perier simply says that Jacqueline persuaded him to abandon the world. Jacqueline represents the retirement as the final result of a long course of dissatisfaction with mundane life. But there are certain anecdotic embellishments of the act which are too famous to be passed over, though they are in part apocryphal. It seems that Pascal in driving to Neuilly was run away with by the horses, and would have been plunged in the river but that the traces fortunately broke. To this, which seems authentic, is usually added the tradition (due to the abbé Boileau) that afterwards he used at times to see an imaginary precipice by his bedside, or at the foot of the chair on which he was sitting. Further, from the 23rd of November 1654 dates the singular document usually known as “Pascal’s amulet,” a parchment slip which he wore constantly about him, and which bears the date followed by some lines of incoherent and strongly mystical devotion.

It must be noted that, though he lived much at Port Royal, and partly at least observed its rule, he never actually became one of its famous solitaries. But for what it did for him (and for a time his health as well as his peace of mind seems to have been improved) he very soon paid an ample and remarkable return. At the end of 1655 Arnauld, the chief light of Port Royal, was condemned by the Sorbonne for heretical doctrine, and it was thought important by the Jansenist and Port Royal party that steps should be taken to disabuse the popular mind. Arnauld would have undertaken the task himself, but his wiser friends knew that his style was anything but popular, and overruled him. It is said that he personally suggested to Pascal to try his hand, and that the first of the famous Provinciales (Provincial Letters, properly Lettres écrites par Louis de Montalte à un provincial de ses amis) was written in a few days, or, less probably, in a day. It was printed without the real author’s name on the 23rd of January 1656, and, being immensely popular, and successful, was followed by others to the number of eighteen.

Shortly after the appearance of the Provinciales, on the 24th of May 1656, occurred the miracle of the Holy Thorn, a fragment of the crown of Christ preserved at Port Royal, which cured the little Marguerite Perier of a fistula lacrymalis. The Jesuits were much mortified by this Jansenist miracle, which, as it was officially recognized, they could not openly deny. Pascal and his friends rejoiced in proportion. The details of his later years after this incident are somewhat scanty. For years before his death we hear only of acts of charity and of, as it seems to modern ideas, extravagant asceticism. Thus Mme Perier tells us that he disliked to see her caress her children, and would not allow the beauty of any woman to be talked of in his presence. What may be called his last illness began as early as 1658, and as the disease progressed it was attended with more and more pain, chiefly in the head. In June 1662, having given up his own house to a poor family who were suffering from small-pox, he went to his sister's house to be nursed, and never afterwards left it. His state was, it seems, mistaken by his physicians, so much so that the offices of the Church were long put off. He was able, however, to receive the Eucharist, and soon afterwards died in convulsions on the 19th of August. A post mortem examination was held, which showed not only grave derangement in the stomach and other organs, but a serious lesion of the brain.

Eight years after Pascal’s death appeared what purported to be his Pensées, and a preface by his nephew Perier gave the world to understand that these were fragments of a great projected apology for Christianity which the author had, in conversation with his friends, planned out years before. The editing of the book was peculiar. It was submitted to a committee of influential Jansenists, with the duc de Roannez at their head, and, in addition, it bore the imprimatur of numerous unofficial approvers who testified to its orthodoxy. It does not appear that there was much suspicion of the garbling which had been practised—garbling not unusual at the time, and excused in this case by the fact of a lull in the troubles of Port Royal and a great desire on the part of its friends to do nothing to disturb that lull. But as a matter of fact no more entirely factitious book ever issued from the press. The fragments which it professed to give were in themselves confused and incoherent enough, nor is it easy to believe that they all formed