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The leading characters in Clermont, whether ecclesiastics or laymen, had taken a deep interest in the subject, and had requested Périer to give them notice of his plans.
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.
My brothers and I, the two Greffuhles, Caumont, Morny, Valewski, Edgard Ney, La Rochette, Casimir Perier, d'Albufera, Wagram, the de l'Aigles; foreigners too, Bedmar, d'Ossuna and officers and some ladies, amongst these the beautiful Duchess of Somerset, who always hunted in a mask, and was invariably escorted by the charming Prince Labanoff.
Lay hands on them! Lock them up in prison." "But, sir," said the officer, himself a former student at the Ecole Polytechnique, "I can't: I've given them my word!" But Casimir Perier was not there to listen even just then I observed a man of woebegone appearance, sitting in a corner of the drawing-room in which the foregoing scene had taken place.
"Oh!" he said, "what people these are! Corbiere! Humann! Casimir Perier! There's a minister for you! I can imagine this in a journal: 'M. Gillenorman, minister! that would be a farce. Well! They are so stupid that it would pass"; he merrily called everything by its name, whether decent or indecent, and did not restrain himself in the least before ladies.
The original Paris cast was as follows: Pelléas, M. Jean Périer; Mélisande, Miss Mary Garden; Arkël, M. Vieuille; Golaud, M. Dufrane; Geneviève, Mlle. Gerville-Réache; Le petit Yniold, M. Blondin; Un Médicin, M. Viguié. M. André Messager was the conductor. The work was admirably mounted under the supervision of the Director of the Opéra-Comique, M. Albert Carré.
Descartes’s name is not mentioned in his correspondence with M. Périer, nor in any of his writings on the subject; and the delay in making the experiments is sufficiently explained by the facts stated by himself, that they could only be made effectually at some place of greater elevation than he could command—such as “Clermont, at the foot of the Puy de Dôme”—and by some person, such as M. Périer, on whose knowledge and accuracy he could rely.
Nor was the domestic character of the group broken by the presence of a son of Casimir Périer, who was soon to marry George Lafayette's eldest daughter, the Count de Ségur, the General's uncle, though but a month or two his elder, and the Count de Tracy, father of Madame George de Lafayette, and founder of the French school of Ideology, companions, both of them, of the General's youth, and, at this serene close of a life of strange vicissitudes and bitter trials, still his friends.
The state of his own health prevented him from conducting the experiment personally, and M. Périer was detained by professional avocations from undertaking it immediately. But at length, in September 1648, the experiment was carried out successfully, and the results communicated to Pascal.
Upon reaching the Minimes, they found that the mercury had not changed its height, notwithstanding the inconstancy of the weather, which had been alternately clear, windy, rainy, and foggy. M. Périer repeated the experiments with both the glass tubes, and found the height of the mercury to be still 26 inches 3½ lines.
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