PORT ROYAL AND PASCAL’S LATER YEARS.
Whatever day-dreams Pascal may have cherished, “God called him,” as his
sister says, “to a great perfection.” It was not in his nature to be
satisfied with either the enchantments or the ambitions of the world.
All the while that he mixed in the luxurious society of Paris, and seemed
merely one of its thoughtless throng, there were throbs within him of a
higher life which could not be stilled. His conscience reproached him
continually amidst all his amusements, and left him uneasy even in the
most exulting moments of the love that filled his heart. This is no
hypothetical picture, but one suggested by himself in conversation with
his sister. She tells us from her retreat how her brother came to see
her, fascinated by the steadfastness of her faith, in contrast with his
own indifference and vacillation. Formerly it was his zeal which had
drawn her to higher thoughts. Now it is the attraction of her piety
which sways him, and leaves him unhappy amidst all the seductions of the
society in which he mingles. “God made use of my sister,” says Madame
Périer, “for the great design, as He had formerly made use of my brother,
when He desired to withdraw my sister from her engagements in the world.”
The severe Jacqueline tells with unfaltering breath the story of her
brother’s spiritual anxieties. She had ceased herself to have any
worldly thoughts.
“She led,” says Madame Périer, “a life so holy, that she edified the
whole house: and in this state it was a special pain to her to see
one to whom she felt herself indebted, under God, for the grace which
she enjoyed, no longer himself in possession of these graces: and as
she saw my brother frequently, she spoke to him often, and finally
with such force and sweetness, that she persuaded him, as he had at
first persuaded her, absolutely to abandon the world.”
Writing to her sister on the 25th of January 1655, she says that Pascal
came to see her at the end of the previous September.
“At this visit he opened himself to me in such a manner as moved my
pity, confessing that in the midst of his exciting occupations, and
of so many things fitted to make him love the world—to which we had
every reason to think him strongly attached—he was yet forcibly moved
to quit all; both by an extreme aversion to its follies and
amusements, and by the continual reproach made by his conscience. He
felt himself detached from his surroundings in such a manner as he
had never felt before, or even approaching to it; yet, otherwise, he
was in such abandonment that there was no movement in his heart to
God. Though he sought Him with all his power, he felt that it was
more his own reason and spirit that moved him towards what he knew to
be best, than any movement of the Divine Spirit. If he only had the
Divine sentiments he once had, he believed himself, in his present
state of detachment, capable of undertaking everything. It must be,
therefore, some wretched ties {76} which still held him back, and
made him resist the movements of the Divine Spirit. The confession
surprised me as much as it gave me joy; and thenceforth I conceived
hopes that I had never had, and thought I must communicate with you
in order to induce you to pray on his behalf. If I were to relate
all the other visits in detail, I should be obliged to write a
volume; for since then they have been so frequent and so long, that I
was wellnigh engrossed by them. I confined myself to watching his
mood without attempting unduly to influence him; and gradually I saw
him so growing in grace that I would hardly have known him. I
believe you will have the same difficulty, if God continues His work;
especially in such wonderful humility, submission, diffidence,
self-contempt, and desire to be nothing in the esteem and memory of
men. Such he is at present. God alone knows what a day will bring
forth.”
Finally, after many visits and struggles with himself, especially as to
his choice of a spiritual guide, he became an inmate of Port Royal des
Granges, under the guidance of M. de Saci. The questions betwixt him and
his sister as to his selection of a confessor or director are very
curious, revealing, as they do, the quiet self-possessed decision of the
one, the scruples of the other, and the proud self-respect of both. As
to one of Pascal’s difficulties, she says, without misgiving—“I saw
clearly that this was only a remnant of independence hidden in the depth
of his heart, which armed itself with every weapon to ward off a
submission which yet in his state of feeling must be perfect.” M.
Singlin was willing to assist the sister with his advice, but was
reluctant himself, in his weak state of health, to assume full
responsibilities towards the brother. Jacqueline herself appeared to him
the best director her brother could have for the time; and there is a
charming blending of humility and yet assumption in the manner in which
she relates this, and speaks of “our new convert.” But finally there is
found in M. de Saci a director “with whom he is delighted, for he comes
of a good stock” (dont it est tout ravi, aussi est-il de bonne race).
Pascal first sought retirement in a residence of his own in the country.
It is particularly mentioned amongst the reasons for his withdrawal from
Paris, that the Duc de Roannez, “who engaged him almost entirely,” was
about to return there. Unable to find everything to his wish, however,
in his own house, “he obtained a chamber or little cell among the
Solitaries of Port Royal,” from which he wrote to his sister with extreme
joy that he was lodged and treated like a prince, “according to St
Bernard’s judgment of what it was to be a prince.” It is still
Jacqueline’s pen which reports all this to Madame Périer. She continues
in the same letter:—
“He joins in every office of the Church from Prime to Compline,
without feeling the slightest inconvenience in rising at five o’clock
in the morning; and as if it was the will of God that he should join
fasting to watching, in defiance of all the medical prescriptions
which had forbidden him both the one and the other, he found that
supper disagreed with him, and was about to give it up.” {77}
Such is the story of Pascal’s final conversion and retirement from the
world. Jacqueline’s details fill in the briefer sketch of Madame Périer,
and both tell the story at first hand. None could have known so well as
they did all the circumstances. It is remarkable, therefore, that
neither of them says anything of the well-known incident, emphasised by
Bossut as the mainly exciting cause of his great change:—
“One day,” it is said, “in the month of October 1654, when he went,
according to his habit, to take his drive to the bridge of Neuilly
_in a carriage and four_, the two leading horses became restive at a
part of the road where there was a parapet, and precipitated
themselves into the Seine. Fortunately, the first strokes of their
feet broke the traces which attached them to the pole, and the
carriage was stayed on the brink of the precipice. The effect of
such a shock on one of Pascal’s feeble health may be imagined. He
swooned away, and was only restored with difficulty, and his nerves
were so shattered that long afterwards, during sleepless nights and
during moments of weakness, he seemed to see a precipice at his
bedside, over which he was on the point of falling.”
This alarming incident, which comes from nearly contemporary tradition,
no doubt contributed to Pascal’s retirement from the world, and no less
probably also a strange vision he had at this time, to which we shall
afterwards advert. But it is peculiarly interesting to trace the inner
history of Pascal’s great change. Evidently, from what his sister says,
his mind had been for some time very ill at ease in the great world in
which he lived. How far this was the working of his old religious
convictions continually renewing their influence through the conversation
of his sister, how far it was mere weariness and disgust with the
frivolities of fashionable life, and how far it may have been baffled
hope and the disenchantments of a broken dream of love, we cannot clearly
tell. All may have moved him, and brought him to that strange state of
isolation which she describes from his own account. But plainly the
world-weariness preceded the fresh dawn of divine strength in his heart;
and there is a tone of hopelessness in speaking of his detachment from
all the things surrounding him, which favours the thought that some new
and unwonted smart had entered into his life, and driven him forth to the
quiet shelter, where at length he found his old peace with God, and the
great mission to which God had called him.
* * * * *
The monastery of Port Royal, in which his sister had already found a
home, remains indelibly associated with Pascal. It was founded in the
beginning of the thirteenth century, in the reign of Philip Augustus; and
a later tradition claimed this magnificent monarch as the author of its
foundation and of its name. It is said that one day he wandered into the
famous valley during the chase, and became lost in its woods, when he was
at length discovered near to an ancient chapel of St Lawrence, which was
much frequented by the devout of the neighbourhood, and that, grateful
because the place had been to him a Port Royal or royal refuge, he
resolved to build a church there. But this is the story of a time when,
as it has been said, “royal founders were in fashion.” More truly, the
name is considered to be derived from the general designation of the fief
or district in which the valley lies, _Porrois_—which, again, is supposed
to be a corruption of _Porra_ or _Borra_, meaning a marshy and woody
hollow.
The valley of Port Royal presents to this day the same natural features
which attracted the eye of the devout solitary in the seventeenth
century. Some years ago I paid a long-wished-for visit to it. It lies
about eighteen miles west of Paris, and seven or eight from Versailles,
on the road to Chevreuse. As the traveller approaches it from
Versailles, the long lines of a level and somewhat dreary road, only
relieved by rows of tall poplar-trees, break into a more picturesque
country. An antique mouldering village, with quaint little church, its
grey lichen-marked stones brightened by the warm sunshine of a September
day, and the straggling vines drooping their pale dusty leaves over the
cottage-doors, made a welcome variety in the monotonous landscape. How
hazy yet cheerful was the brightness in which the poor mean houses seemed
to sleep! After this the road swept down a long declivity, crowned on
one side by an irregular outline of wood, and presenting here and there
broken and dilapidated traces of former habitations. The famous valley
of Port Royal lay before us. It was a quiet and peaceful yet gloomy
scene. The seclusion was perfect. No hum of cheerful industry enlivened
the desolate space. An air rather as of long-continued neglect rested on
ruined garden and terraces, on farmhouse and dovecot, and the remains as
of a chapel nearer at hand. The more minutely the eye took in the scene,
the more sad seemed its wasted recesses and the few monuments of its
departed glories. The stillness as of a buried past lay all about, and
it required an effort of imagination to people the valley with the sacred
activities of the seventeenth century.
A rough wooden enclosure has been erected on the site of the high altar
surmounted by a cross. It contained a few memorials, amongst the most
touching of which were simple portraits of Arnauld, Le Maitre, De Saci,
Quesnel, Nicole, Pascal, the Mère Angélique, the Mère Agnès, Jacqueline
Pascal, and Dr Hanlon the physician. Two portraits of the Mère Agnès
particularly impressed me. The lines of the face were exquisitely
touching in their gentle bravery and patience. As I looked at the noble
and sweet countenances grouped on the bare unadorned walls, the sacred
memories of the place rose vividly before my mind. It was here alone
that the recluses from the neighbouring Grange met the sainted
sisterhood, and mingled with them the prayers and tears of penitence.
Otherwise they dwelt apart, each in diligent privacy, intent on their
works of education or of charity. All the ruin and decay and somewhat
dreary sadness of the scene could not weaken my sense of the beautiful
life of thought and faith and hope and love that had once breathed there;
and never before had I felt so deeply the enduring reality of the
spiritual heroism and self-sacrifice, the glory of suffering and of
goodness, that had made the spot so memorable.
The monastery was founded, not by Philip Augustus, but by Matthieu, first
Lord of Marli, a younger son of the noble house of Montmorency. Having
formed the design of accompanying the crusade proclaimed by Innocent III.
to the Holy Land, he left at the disposal of his wife, Mathilde de
Garlande, and his kinsman, the Bishop of Paris, a sum of money to devote
to some pious work in his absence. They agreed to apply it to the
erection of a monastery for nuns in this secluded valley, that had
already acquired a reputation for sanctity in connection with the old
chapel dedicated to St Lawrence, which attracted large numbers of
worshippers. The foundations of the church and monastery were laid in
1204. They were designed by the same architect who built the Cathedral
of Amiens, and ere long the graceful and beautiful structures were seen
rising in the wilderness. The nuns belonged to the Cistercian order.
Their dress was white woollen, with a black veil; but afterwards they
adopted as their distinctive badge a large scarlet cross on their white
scapulary, as the symbol of the “Institute of the Holy Sacrament.”
The abbey underwent the usual history of such institutions.
Distinguished at first by the strictness of its discipline and the piety
of its inmates, it became gradually corrupted with increasing wealth,
till, in the end of the sixteenth century, it had grown notorious for
gross and scandalous abuses. The revenues were squandered in luxury; the
nuns did what they liked; and the extravagances and dissipations of the
world were repeated amidst the solitudes which had been consecrated to
devotion. But at length its revival arose out of one of the most obvious
abuses connected with it. The patronage of the institution, like that of
others, had been distributed without any regard to the fitness of the
occupants, even to girls of immature age. In this manner the abbey of
Port Royal accidentally fell to the lot of one who was destined by her
ardent piety to breathe a new life into it, and by her indomitable and
lofty genius to give it an undying reputation.
Jacqueline Marie Arnauld—better known by her official name, La Mère
Angélique—was appointed abbess of Port Royal when she was only eight
years of age. She was descended from a distinguished family belonging
originally to the old _noblesse_ of Provence, but which had migrated to
Auvergne and settled there. Of vigorous healthiness, both mental and
physical, the Arnaulds had already acquired a merited position and name
in the annals of France. In the beginning of the sixteenth century it
found its way to Paris in the person of Antoine Arnauld, Seigneur de la
Mothe, the grandfather of the heroine of Port Royal. M. de la Mothe, as
he was commonly called, was endowed with the energetic will, and with
more than the usual talents, of his family. He was specially known as
Procureur-général to Catherine de Médicis; but, as he himself said, he
wore “a soldier’s coat as well as a lawyer’s robe.” He was a Huguenot,
and nearly perished in the Bartholomew massacre. He had eight sons,
every one of whom more or less achieved distinction in the service of
their country; but his second son and namesake peculiarly inherited his
father’s legal talents, and became his successor in the office of
Procureur-général. He more than rivalled his father’s forensic success;
and many traditions survive of his great eloquence, and of the
pre-eminent ability with which he pleaded on behalf of the University of
Paris for the expulsion of the Jesuits from France, under suspicion of
having instigated an attempt on the life of Henri IV. in 1593. This
great effort has been called the “original sin” of the Arnauld family
against the Jesuit order, which was never forgiven. His eloquence
produced such an impression, that it is said the judges rose in their
seats to listen to his speech, while crowds assembled at the closed doors
of the Court to catch its partial echoes. And yet, like some other great
speeches, it cannot now be read without weariness.
Antoine Arnauld married the youthful daughter of M. Marion, the
Avocat-général, who became a mother while still only a girl of fifteen,
but who grew into a noble and large-hearted woman, full of deeds of piety
and charity. In all, the couple had twenty children, and felt, as may be
imagined, the pressure of providing for so many. Out of this pressure
came the remarkable lot of two of the daughters. The benefices of the
Church were a fruitful field of provision, and the avocat-général, the
maternal grandfather of the children, had large ecclesiastical influence.
The result was the appointment not only of one daughter to the abbey of
Port Royal, but also of a younger sister, Agnès, only six years of age,
to the abbey of St Cyr, about six miles distant from Port Royal.
Difficulties, not without reason, were found in obtaining the papal
sanction to such appointments; but these were at last overcome by means,
it is said, more creditable to M. Arnauld’s ability than to his
integrity.
At the age of eleven, in the year 1602, Angélique was installed Abbess of
Port Royal. Her sister took the veil at the age of seven. United in the
nursery, they had also spent some months together at the abbey of St Cyr,
in preparation for their solemn office. They were of marked but very
contrasted characters. The elder inherited the strong will and dominant
energy of her race. As yet, and for some time afterwards, without any
religious bias, she contemplated her prospects with a quiet and proud
consciousness of responsibility. The younger sister was of a softer and
more submissive nature. She shrank from her high position, saying that
an abbess had to answer to God for the souls of her nuns, and she was
sure that she would have enough to do to take care of her own. Angélique
had no such scruples. She was glad to be an abbess, and was resolved
that her nuns should thoroughly do their duty. These sayings have been
preserved in the memoirs of the family, and are supposed to indicate
happily the firm, persistent spirit and legislative capacity of the one
sister, in contrast with the passive rather than active strength, and
milder yet no less enduring purpose, of the other.
The remarkable story of Angélique’s conversion by the preaching of a
Capucin friar in 1608, her strange contest with her parents which
followed, the strengthening impulses in different directions which her
religious life received, first from the famous St Francis de Sales, and
finally, and especially, from the no less remarkable Abbé de St Cyran,
all belong to the history of Port Royal, and cannot be detailed here. It
is a touching and beautiful story, which can never lose its interest. It
is only necessary that we draw attention to the temporary removal of the
Abbess with her nuns to Paris in the year 1635, and to the settlement in
the valley, during their absence from it, of the band of Solitaries whose
piety and genius, no less than the heroic devotion of the sisterhood,
have shed such a glory around it. It was the spiritual influence of St
Cyran which overflowed in this direction. The religious genius of this
remarkable man, of whom we shall speak more particularly in the next
chapter, laid its spell upon the social life around him, and brought to
his feet some of the most able and distinguished young men of the time.
The elder brother of Angélique and Agnès Arnauld, known as M. d’Andilly,
was amongst his devoted friends; and it was through him that St Cyran
first became connected with Port Royal. D’Andilly was married, and a
courtier—a busy man in the political circles of his day; but he had long
bowed before the force of St Cyran’s religious convictions, and finally
he too abandoned the world, and sought the retirement of Port Royal,
whither three of his nephews had preceded him; and a younger and yet more
distinguished brother, the namesake of his father, soon followed him. It
was D’Andilly who said of St Cyran, “I was under such obligations to him
that I loved him more than life.” On the other hand, St Cyran said of
him, “He has not the virtue of a saint or an anchorite, but I know no man
of his condition who is so solidly virtuous.”
The brotherhood of Port Royal had its beginning in 1637 with the
conversion of two of the nephews of D’Andilly and the Mère Angélique,
children of Arnauld’s eldest daughter, who had married unhappily and been
soon separated from her husband. These grandsons of Arnauld are known as
M. le Maitre and M. de Sercourt, the former of whom, like his ancestors,
had greatly distinguished himself at the bar. The latter was no less
distinguished as a soldier. In the midst of worldly success, they
forsook everything and gave themselves to a life of religious retirement,
in which they were by-and-by joined by a younger and still more
remarkable brother, known as M. de Saci, trained for the Church, and
already mentioned in connection with Pascal’s conversion. He became
Pascal’s spiritual director, and held with him the famous conversation on
Epictetus and Montaigne. To the same group of men belonged Singlin, of
whom we have heard so much in former pages, and Lancelot and Fontaine;
above all, Antoine Arnauld, the youngest of the large Arnauld family, and
the most indefatigable of them all. Singlin was a favourite of St Cyran,
and his successor in the office of spiritual director to the monastery,
as De Saci was again the successor of Singlin in the same capacity. He
was a man of less ability and knowledge than many of the others, the son
of a wine merchant, who did not begin his religious studies till a
comparatively late period, but of a very direct and simple character, and
well skilled in the mysteries of the conscience, which made him a
spiritual power in the community. He was withal of singular humility,
and would fain have retired from the office of Confessor when St Cyran
was set at liberty in 1643 after his long imprisonment; but neither then
nor afterwards, on his illustrious friend’s death, was he allowed to do
so. St Cyran warned him that he could not fly from the duties of such a
position without incurring the guilt of disobedience. De Saci seems to
have been especially remarkable for his quiet self-possession and
cautious insight into character. His brother, Le Maitre, brings out in a
curious manner the contrast between his own impetuous character and the
leisurely efficiency of De Saci’s temper. As they sat at their evening
meal—“a very modest collation”—
“He had hardly begun his supper when mine was already half digested.
. . . Of quick and warm disposition, I had seen the end of my
portion almost as soon as the beginning; it rapidly disappeared; and
as I was thinking of rising from the table, I saw my brother De Saci,
with his usual coolness and gravity, take a little piece of apple,
peel it quietly, cut it leisurely, and eat it slowly. Then, after
having finished, he rose almost as light as he had sat down, leaving
untouched nearly all his very moderate portion. He went away as if
he were quite satisfied, and even appeared to grow fat upon fasts.”
{87}
Claude Lancelot was the schoolmaster of the community, and represents to
us perhaps more fully than any other name its famous system of education.
Fontaine was one of its chief memoir writers, from whom we derive so much
of our knowledge of the society; while the younger Arnauld, of whom we
shall afterwards speak, Nicole, and the subject of our present sketch,
represent its philosophical and literary activity.
Such was the company to which Pascal joined himself in 1655. They had
been settled in divers places,—at first, in 1637, when they were still
only a few disciples gathered around St Cyran, in the immediate
neighbourhood of Port Royal de Paris; and then, when driven from this
after their great head’s imprisonment, for a short time at a place called
Ferté Milon; and then, finally, in 1639, at Port Royal des Champs. Here
they made a great change for the better by their assiduous industry.
They drained the marshy valley, cleared it of its overgrowth of
brushwood, and converted it into a comparatively smiling and salubrious
abode. On the return of the sisterhood from Port Royal de Paris in 1648,
the nuns found the place improved beyond their expectations. The
conventual buildings had been repaired, and the church kept in good
preservation. The bells of the church tower pealed a welcome; a large
concourse of the neighbouring poor assembled in the courtyard to greet
them; while the Solitaries—one of their number, a priest, bearing a
cross—waited at the church door to enter with them, and swell with their
voices the Te Deum with which they celebrated their return. After this
they parted, a few of the brotherhood repairing to a house which had been
taken for them in Paris, but others retiring to the well-known farm on
the hill known as Les Granges. There was, of course, the strictest
seclusion maintained in the nunnery, as before, and the inmates of Les
Granges were wellnigh as completely severed from it as the brethren who
retired to Paris.
The mode of life of the Solitaries was simple in the highest degree.
They wore no distinctive dress. Their wants were supplied by the barest
necessaries in the shape of lodging and furniture. From early morning,
three A.M., to night, they were occupied in works of piety, charity, or
industry. They met in the chapel after their private devotions to say
matins and lauds, a service which occupied about an hour and a half,
after which they kissed the earth in token of a common lowliness, and
sought each his own room for a time. The round of devotion thus
commenced was continued with a steady uniformity,—Prime at half-past six;
Tierces at nine, and after this a daily Mass; Sexte at eleven; Nones at
two; Vespers at four; and Compline closing the series at a quarter-past
seven. {89} The Gospel and Epistles were read daily; and sometimes
during or after dinner the Lives of the Saints. They dined together; and
a walk thereafter formed the sole recreation of the day. Two hours in
the morning, and two in the afternoon, were devoted to work in the fields
or in the garden by those who were able for such tasks. Confession and
communion were frequent, but no uniform rule was enforced. In this, as
in fasting and austerities generally, each recluse was left to his own
free will; and, as will be seen in Pascal’s case, there was no need to
stimulate the morbid desire for bodily mortification.
* * * * *
It was in the last month of 1654 that Pascal’s final conversion and
adhesion to Port Royal took place. His mind for some time before had
been greatly agitated, as already explained—filled with disgust of the
world and all its enjoyments. Then had come the accident at the Bridge
of Neuilly, and about the same time, or a little later, a remarkable
vision or ecstasy which he has himself described, and which has given
rise to a good deal of useless speculation. During life he never spoke
of this matter, unless it may have been to his confessor; {90} but after
his death two copies of a brief writing were found upon him,—the one
written on parchment enclosing the other written on paper, and carefully
stitched into the clothes that he had worn day by day. It is beyond
question that Pascal must have been deeply touched by the event, whatever
may have been its precise nature, the memorial of which he had thus
preserved. The footnote shows the writing in the original, as printed by
M. Faugère: there are some variations in the copies, but it seems most
correctly given as below. It may be translated as follows:—
* * * * *
The year of grace 1654.
Monday 23d November, day of St Clement, pope and martyr, and others in
the martyrology.
Vigil of St Chrysogone, martyr and others.
From about half-past ten o’clock in the evening till about half-past
twelve.
Fire.
God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob,
Not of philosophers and of savants.
Certitude. Certitude. Sentiment. Joy. Peace.
God of Jesus Christ
My God and your God.
Thy God will be my God—
Oblivion of the world and of all save God.
He is found only by the ways taught in the Gospel.
Grandeur of the human soul.
Just Father, the world hath not known Thee, but I have known Thee.
Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.
I have separated myself from Him—
They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living water.
My God, will you forsake me?—
Oh, may I not be separated from Him eternally!
This is life eternal, that they know Thee the only true God,
and Him whom Thou hast sent, J.-C.
Jesus Christ—
Jesus Christ—
I have separated myself from Him; I have fled, renounced, crucified Him.
Oh that I may never be separated from Him!
He is only held fast by the ways taught in the Gospel.
Renunciation total and sweet,
etc. {91}
* * * * *
It is difficult to make much of this document. Are we to suppose that
Pascal, on the 23d of November 1654, thought he saw a vision, revealing
to him the truth of Christianity, and the vanity of philosophy and the
world? Even if Pascal did this, our estimate of the matter could hardly
be much affected. But there is no evidence that he himself attached a
supernatural character to the incident. He felt, no doubt, that a real
revelation had come to him, that his mind had been lifted in spiritual
ecstasy away from the love of all that for a time had hid from him the
presence of God and of a higher world. The moment of this blessed
experience had been sacred to him. He had tried to trace it in these
broken characters, and in seasons of doubt or depression he may have
sought to awaken a new fervour of faith and love by their contemplation.
This seems all the natural meaning of the incident; but, as some have
endeavoured to attach to it a supernatural importance, so others, in whom
the idea not only of the supernatural but of the spiritual only excites
contempt, have tried to give to it a purely superstitious character. It
was Condorcet who first applied to the paper the epithet of Pascal’s
“Amulette;” and Lélut has adopted the epithet, and written a volume more
or less relating to it. He supposes the vision to have occurred to
Pascal on the evening of the day when the event at Neuilly had upset his
nervous system—always easily disturbed—and brought before him a frightful
picture of his alienation from God, and the piety of his early manhood.
Facts mingled with the dreams of his excited imagination. He saw the
horses plunging over the precipice, and an abyss seemed to open beside
him—the abyss of eternity; when, lo! from the depths of the abyss there
appeared a globe of fire (_un globe de feu_) encircled with the Cross;
and the irresistible impulse was stirred in him to throw aside the world
for ever, and embrace God,—“Not the God of philosophers or of savants,”
but “the God of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob—the God of Jesus Christ,”
from whom he had been severed, but from whom he felt he never more would
be severed; abiding in Him in “sweet and total renunciation” of all else.
The idea, of course, is that Pascal’s dream or vision was the result of
physical derangement; and it may be safely granted that if the reality at
all corresponded to Lélut’s imaginary picture, this is its natural
explanation. The story of the “vision” and the “abyss” are thus made,
not without a certain appearance of probability, to fit into one another,
and both into the accident at Neuilly; and a certain congruity of
external and internal alarm is hence given to the great crisis of
Pascal’s life. Unhappily, however, there is a lack of evidence regarding
the accident itself, {94} and, still more, the accompanying story of the
abyss seen by Pascal at his side, which must make the reader cautious who
has no theory to support. Voltaire, in his usual manner, made the most
of Pascal’s supposed delusions. “In the last years of his life,” he
said, “Pascal believed that he had seen an abyss _by the side of his
chair_,—need we on that account have the same fancy? I, too, see an
abyss, but it is in the very things which he believed that he had
explained.” He quotes also the authority of Leibnitz for the statement
that Pascal’s melancholy had led his intellect astray—a result, he adds,
not at all wonderful in the case of a man of such delicate temperament
and gloomy imagination. But Voltaire was not precise here, as in other
matters about Pascal. He understood him too little to be a good judge of
his mental peculiarities. All that Leibnitz really said was, that
Pascal, “in wishing to fathom the depths of religion, had become
scrupulous even to folly.” {95}
Whatever explanation we may give of the supposed incidents attending
Pascal’s conversion, there never was a more absurd fancy than that
Pascal’s mind suffered any eclipse in the great change that came to him.
He may have been credulous, he may have been superstitious. The miracle
of the Holy Thorn may be an evidence of the one, and the unnatural
asceticism of his later years a proof of the other. But to speak of the
author of the ‘Provincial Letters,’ of the problems on the Cycloid, and
finally of the ‘Pensées,’ as if his intellect had suffered from his
conversion, is to use words without meaning. All his noblest writings
were the product of his religious experience, and he never soared so high
in intellectual and literary achievement as when moving on the wings of
spiritual indignation or of spiritual aspiration.
The whole interest of Pascal’s life from this period is concentrated in
his writings—first the ‘Provincials,’ and then the ‘Pensées,’ to which we
devote separate chapters. There was only the interval of a year between
his conversion and the commencement of his great controversy, and little
is known of how he passed his time during this interval. He seems to
have remained chiefly at Port Royal under the guidance of M. de Saci, and
to have felt an unwonted measure of happiness in his triumph over the
world and in the possession of his own quiet thoughts. We have seen how
he spoke of being treated “like a prince,” and even his health seemed to
improve, notwithstanding the regularity and severity of his religious
devotions. He communicated his feelings of elation to his sister, who
replied (19th January 1655) that she was delighted to find him “gay in
his solitude,” as she never was at his happiness in the world.
“Notwithstanding,” she adds, “I do not know how M. de Saci adapts himself
to so light-hearted a penitent, who professes to find compensation for
the vain joys and amusements of the world in joys somewhat more
reasonable, and _jeux d’esprit_ more allowable, instead of expiating them
by perpetual tears.”
How long Pascal’s pious elation continued is not said, nor have we any
further details of his religious life at Port Royal. He never absolutely
took up his abode there as one of the Solitaries, and could therefore say
in his sixteenth Provincial Letter, without more than an innocent
equivocation, that he “did not belong to Port Royal.” He was still found
there, however, in the beginning of the following year (1655), when the
affair of M. Arnauld and the Sorbonne was approaching its crisis, and the
idea of his famous letters was started in a meeting, to be afterwards
mentioned, between him and Arnauld and Nicole. After this, during the
publication of the ‘Letters,’ Pascal seems chiefly to have resided in
Paris, probably with a view to the greater facilities he enjoyed there in
prosecuting his assaults upon the Jesuits, which continued till the
spring of 1657. During the following year he was busy with the great
idea of a work in defence of religion, suggested partly by his own
intellectual activity, but partly also by a special incident at Port
Royal which made a great impression upon him.
This was the famous “miracle” of the Holy Thorn. Madame Périer’s
daughter, Marguerite Périer—the same to whom we are indebted for
interesting memorials of her uncle’s life—had become, with her sister, a
pupil at Port Royal. She suffered from an apparently incurable disease
of the eye, _fistula lachrymalis_. On a sudden she was reported to be
entirely cured, and the cure was attributed to the touch of a relic which
had been brought to the abbey by a priest,—a supposed thorn from the
crown of Christ. It is remarkable that the Mère Angélique was somewhat
slow of belief as to the “miracle,” and that she marvelled the world
should make so much of it. But it secured the credence of Pascal, and
became a great fact in the history of Port Royal, staying for a time the
hand of persecution, and pointing, as its friends believed, to the
visible interposition of heaven. How could the accusations against Port
Royal be true, seeing what God Himself had done on its behalf? “This
place, which men say is the devil’s temple, God makes His house. Men
declare that its children must be taken out of it, and God heals them
there. They are threatened with all the furies; God loads them with His
favours.” This was Pascal’s own language on the subject, {97} and there
can be no doubt that the supposed miracle deeply affected him. He was
“sensibly touched,” it is said, “by such a grace, regarding it as
virtually done to himself, seeing it was done to one so near to him in
kindred, and who was his spiritual daughter in baptism.” He was
penetrated by a great joy, and much occupied by the thought of what had
happened, and the general subject of miracles. There was in this manner
awakened in him “the extreme desire of employing himself on a work in
refutation of the principles and false reasonings of the atheists.” “He
had studied them,” his sister continues, “with great care, and applied
his whole mind to search out the means of convincing them. His last year
of work was entirely occupied in collecting divers thoughts on this
subject.”
Unhappily, in the course of 1658 Pascal’s old illness returned with
redoubled severity, and the last four years of his life became in
consequence years of great languor and interruption of his projected
work. The practice of continuous composition failed him. Hitherto he
had been wont to develop his thoughts completely,—to write them out, as
it were, mentally before committing them to paper; but now he began the
habit of transferring his ideas rapidly, and sometimes imperfectly, to
manuscript, as they arose in his mind. In many cases, if not in all,
these first sketches remained as originally made, without any revision or
further reconstruction; and from the mass of papers accumulated in this
manner during these years the ‘Pensées’ were formed—the story of whose
publication will be afterwards told. Strangely, it was in this very
year, during a fit of severe toothache, apparently connected with his
general illness, that Pascal began his wonderful series of problems on
the cycloid, showing how fresh and unimpaired his scientific genius
remained under all the changes of his health and of his main intellectual
interests.
The last years of Pascal’s life, in their deep suffering, and in their
many traits of pious resignation and self-denial, have been fully
sketched by Madame Périer. We do not think it necessary to repeat the
sketch here, touching and beautiful as in some respects it is. It is
impossible to read her simple and earnest narrative without emotion, and
yet the emotion is apt to evaporate in translation. It is impossible,
also, to avoid the feeling that, with all the tenderness and humility of
Pascal’s later years, there mingle a strange pride in his very
austerities, and something of the nature of religious mania, which,
beautiful as may be the forms it sometimes takes, is yet in its spirit,
and in not a few of its excesses, essentially unlovely. Pascal’s care of
the poor, his love of them—“to serve the poor in a spirit of poverty” was
what appeared to him “most agreeable to God”—his wish to die among them,
to be carried to the Hospital for Incurables, and breathe his last there;
the story of his rescue of the poor girl who asked alms from him on the
streets; his unparalleled patience, and even gladness, in suffering, so
that he seemed to welcome it and bind it about him as a garment; his
wonderful humility and yet his noble courage at the last in the matter of
the Formulary,—all this goes to the heart of the reader. It must be a
cold heart that is not moved by the picture of a great soul striving “to
renounce all pleasure and all superfluities,”—to copy literally, like St
Francis, the portrait of his Master. But here, as everywhere, the human
copy falls infinitely short of the divine Original. There is the
loveliness of a true human life beneath all the picture of suffering
presented to us in the Gospels. All the hues of natural feeling have
gone out of the last years of Pascal. He not only bore suffering—he
preferred it; and he boldly justified his preference. “Sickness,” he
said, “is the natural state of the Christian; it puts us in the condition
in which we always ought to be.” In this spirit he strove to deaden any
sensation of pleasure in his food, in the attentions of his relatives and
friends, even in his studies. He could not bear to see his sister
caressing her children; there seemed to him harm in even saying that a
woman was beautiful; the married state was a “kind of homicide or rather
Deicide.” He thought it wrong that any one should find pleasure in
attachment to him, for he “was not the final object of any being, and had
not wherewith to satisfy any.” So jealous was he of any surprise of
pleasure, of any thought of vanity or complacency in himself and his
work, that he wore a girdle of iron next his skin, the sharp points of
which he pressed closely when he thought himself in any danger,
especially in such moments of intercourse with the world as he still
sometimes allowed himself.
Such details are neither interesting in themselves nor do they present
Pascal in his highest character. One cannot help feeling that, touching
as Madame Périer’s narrative is, there must have been, even in the Pascal
of later years, more than she has drawn for us. One glimpse we get, but
not in her pages, of a more natural temper, when he withstood his
Jansenist friends in the matter of subscribing the Formulary demanded
from the Port Royalists. He had himself previously been willing to
subscribe, with certain restrictions, when his sister Jacqueline alone
stood out in her resistance to what she deemed a treasonable betrayal of
the cause. She signed at last, but against her conscience, and, so to
speak, with her blood. She died immediately afterwards, the first victim
of the signature, as she has been called, and bequeathing a letter to her
fellow-sufferers on the subject. Whether inspired by her words or not,
Pascal took a firm stand against any further concessions, and in a famous
interview with Arnauld, Nicole, and Sainte-Marthe, he argued the point
with such strength and vehemence that he fell fainting to the ground.
{101}
This was in the end of 1661, when his sufferings were fast drawing to a
close. In the previous summer, when at Clermont, he had written to
Fermat that he was so weak as to be “unable to walk without a stick, or
to hold himself on horseback.” His weakness had grown apace, and in June
1662 he was seized with his last illness. It was necessary that his
sister should nurse him, and this could only be done by his removal to
her house, for he had given up his own house to a poor family, one of
whose children had taken smallpox, and he would allow neither the child
to be removed nor his sister to run the risk of carrying infection to her
children. He left his own home for hers, therefore, on the 27th of June,
and never returned. Three days after his removal he was seized with a
violent colic, which deprived him of all sleep. His physicians at first
were not alarmed, as his pulse continued good, but gradually pain and
sleeplessness wore him out. He confessed both to the _curé_ of the
parish and to his friend Sainte-Marthe, one of the directors of the
community. He wished, as we said, to die in the Hospital for Incurables
amongst the poor, but in his state of weakness it was impossible to
gratify this wish. After the administration of the last sacrament, which
he received with tearful emotion, he thanked the _curé_, and exclaimed,
“May God never leave me!” These were his last words. Convulsions having
returned, he expired on the 19th of August 1662.
It is unnecessary to attempt any estimate of Pascal’s character. The
reader must draw it for himself in the light of these pages. With all
enthusiasm for its grandeur and unity of purpose, and that moral and
intellectual elevation which it everywhere shows, it may be found lacking
in breadth and variety, and that familiar interest and charm which
strangely often come from the contemplation of human weakness rather than
of human strength. There is certainly less to love in him than to
admire—less to call forth delight than respect. The play of natural
individuality is hidden behind lines of lofty distance, and latterly of
Jansenist severity. A proud, ascetic, and worn figure seems to rise
before us; but strangely Pascal’s portrait, as known to us, conveys no
idea of asceticism. The face is full-fleshed and expressive, like the
face of a child, with large ripe lips and open eyes of wonder,—a portrait
which suggests the companion of the Duc de Roannez in his years of
pleasure, rather than the weary and pain-worn penitent of Port Royal.
{102}