who had impressed him beyond giving their father a share in the superintendence of Rouen; he thus put them in the way of the great Corneille, who was affectionately kind to Jacqueline, but took no particular notice of Blaise Pascal.  The latter was seventeen; he had already written his Traite des Coniques (Treatise on Conics) and begun to occupy himself with “his arithmetical machine,” as his sister, Madame Perier calls it.  At twenty-three he had ceased to apply his mind to human sciences; “when he afterwards discovered the roulette (cycloid), it was without thinking,” says Madame Perier, “and to distract his attention from a severe tooth-ache he had.”  He was not twenty-four when anxiety for his salvation and for the glory of God had taken complete possession of his soul.  It was to the same end that he composed the Lettres Provinciales, the first of which was written in six days, and the style of which, clear, lively, precise, far removed from the somewhat solemn gravity of Port-Royal, formed French prose as Malherbe and Boileau formed the poetry.  This was the impression of his contemporaries, the most hard of them to please in the art of writing.  “That is excellent; that will be relished,” said the recluses of Port-Royal, in spite of the misgivings of M. Singlin.  More than thirty years after Pascal’s ddath, Madame de Sevigne, in 1689, wrote to Madame de Grignan, “Sometimes, to divert ourselves, we read the little Letters (to a provincial).  Good heavens, how charming!  And how my son reads them!  I always think of my daughter, and how that excess of correctness of reasoning would suit her; but your brother says that you consider that it is always the same thing over again.  Ah!  My goodness, so much the better!  Could any one have a more perfect style, a raillery more refined, more natural, more delicate, worthier offspring of those dialogues of Plato, which are so fine?  And when, after the first ten letters, he addresses himself to the reverend Jesuit fathers, what earnestness, what solidity, what force!  What eloquence!  What love for God and for the truth!  What a way of maintaining it and making it understood!  I am sure that you have never read them but in a hurry, pitching on the pleasant places; but it is not so when they are read at leisure.”  Lord Macaulay once said to M. Guizot, “Amongst modern works I know only two perfect ones, to which there is no exception to be taken, and they are Pascal’s Provincials and the Letters of Madame de Sevigne.”

[Illustration:  Blaise Pascal——­597]

Boileau was of Lord Macaulay’s opinion; at least as regarded Pascal.  “Corbinelli wrote to me the other day,” says Madame de Sevigne, on the 15th of January, 1690:  “he gave me an account of a conversation and a dinner at M. de Lamoignon’s:  the persons were the master and mistress of the house, M. de Troyes, M. de Toulon, Father Bourdaloue, a comrade of his, Desprdaux, and Corbinelli.  The talk was of ancient and modern