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Pascal's charge against human ignorance is merciless. The God of Port-Royal has the hard and motionless face of the ancient Destiny: He withdraws into the clouds, and only shews Himself at the end to raise up His poor creature. In Augustin the accent is tender, trusting, really like a son, and though he be harassed, one can discern the thrill of an unconquerable hope.
Ferguson's soul was unable to get in touch with, or make an appeal to, those of his thousand employees? It might indeed have been said that Francis Ferguson cared for his own soul, as he cared for the rest of his property, and kept it carefully insured, somewhat, perhaps, on the principle of Pascal's wager.
But in spite of being able to see Alice every day, and of enjoying Canon Pascal's constant companionship, he was ill at ease, and Phebe was dissatisfied. This was exactly the life Felicita had dreaded for him, an easy, half-occupied life in a small parish, where there was little active employment for either mind or body. The thought of it troubled and haunted Phebe.
Then suddenly one day a small pamphlet in the form of a letter appeared on the bookstalls of Paris; and with its appearance the long reign of confused ideals and misguided efforts came to an end for ever. The pamphlet was the first of Pascal's Lettres Provinciales the work which ushered into being the great classical age the Grand Siècle of Louis XIV.
Listen, we will go very far from here, where no one knows us, where everybody will greet you and you shall be happy." Only one thing does not come to their minds: to be married. When Pascal's mother speaks to him about it, they do not listen to it. It is not dictated to her by woman's modesty, to him by the care for her and the desire to shelter her from insults. Why?
She and monsieur have been quarrelling for a good half-hour. And, heavenly powers, isn't he tantalizing!" The most intense curiosity gleamed in the eyes of Pascal's conductor, and with an airy of secrecy, he asked: "What is the cause of the rumpus? That Fernand, no doubt or some one else?" "No; this morning it's about M. Van Klopen." "Madame's dressmaker?" "The same.
Ludicrous stories were told of her excessive fear of illness, and in her fits of alarm she found comfort from the ministrations of Antoine Singlin, who was the director of Pascal's conscience. She became intimate with Arnauld d'Andilly, and with the rest of those Jansenist authors of whom Racine said that their works were "the admiration of scholars and the consolation of all pious persons."
While speaking Juve was watching carefully the expression on Marie Pascal's face. She had grown very pale and at the end protested with a cry: "No, no, you are wrong. The King had not two mistresses. And besides, the chemise I found was made of coarse linen, and would not certainly be worn by that sort of woman."
His works have passed through several editions. They were translated from the Latin into French by Paul Bert, member of the Chamber of Deputies. An English translation of the French rendering was published by B.F. Bradbury, of Boston, Massachusetts. The reader is also referred to Pascal's "Provincial Letters" and to Migne's "Dictionnaire de cas de Conscience."
Your baseness but, begging Pascal's pardon, I cannot call it baseness your connecting link with the brute creation lies in those other gifts of God which you and they share in common in those wonders of your organization, which we shall now meet with in them again, in full perfection at first, and that in every respect; by which fact you may learn, if you never thought of it before, that the lower animals come from the same creating hand as yourself, and ought to be looked upon to some extent as younger brothers, however distasteful such a notion may seem at first.
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