works.  Despreaux supported the ancient, with the exception of one single modern, which surpassed, in his opinion, both old and new.  Bourdaloue’s comrade, who assumed the well-read air, and who had fastened on to Despreaux and Corbinelli, asked him what in the world this book could be that was so remarkably clever.  Despreaux would not give the name.  Corbinelli said to him, ’Sir, I conjure you to tell me, that I may read it all night.’  Despreaux answered, laughing, ’Ah! sir, you have read it more than once, I am sure.’  The Jesuit joins in, with a disdainful air, and presses Despreaux to name this marvellous writer.  ’Do not press me, father,’ says Despreaux.  The father persists.  At last Despreaux takes hold of his arm, and squeezing it very hard, says, ’You will have it, father; well, then, egad! it is Pascal.’  ‘Pascal,’ says the father, all blushes and astonishment; ‘Pascal is as beautiful as the false can be.’  ‘False,’ replied Despreaux:  ’false!  Let me tell you that he is as true as he is inimitable; he has just been translated into three languages.’  The father rejoined, ‘He is none the more true for that.’  Despreaux grew warm, and shouted like a madman:  ’Well, father, will you say that one of yours did not have it printed in one of his books that a Christian was not obliged to love God?  Dare you say that that is false?’ ‘Sir,’ said the father, in a fury, ‘we must distinguish.’  ‘Distinguish!’ cried Despreaux; ’distinguish, egad! distinguish!  Distinguish whether we are obliged to love God!’ And, taking Corbinelli by the arm, he flew off to the other end of the room, coming back again, and rushing about like a lunatic; but he would not go near the father any more, and went off to join the rest of the company.  Here endeth the story; the curtain falls.”  Literary taste and religious sympathies combined, in the case of Boileau, to exalt Pascal.

The provincials could not satisfy for long the pious ardor of Pascal’s soul; he took in hand his great work on the Verite de la Religion.  He had taken a vigorous part in the discussions of Port-Royal as to subscription of the formulary:  his opinion was decidedly in favor of resistance.  It was the moment when MM.  Arnauld and Nicole had discovered a restriction, as it was then called, which allowed of subscribing with a safe conscience.  “M.  Pascal, who loved truth above all things,” writes his niece, Marguerite Perier; “who, moreover, was pulled down by a pain in the head, which never left him; who had exerted himself to make them feel as he himself felt; and who had expressed himself very vigorously in spite of his weakness, was so grief-stricken that he had a fit, and lost speech and consciousness.  Everybody was alarmed.  Exertions were made to bring him round, and then those gentlemen withdrew.  When he was quite recovered, Madame Perier asked him what had caused this incident.  He answered, ’When I saw all those persons that I looked upon as being those whom God had made to know the truth,