One of the most pathetic and striking illustrations of the fervent devotion which was a characteristic product of Port-Royal, is supplied by Jacqueline Pascal, sister of the great Blaise Pascal.  Young, spirituelle, very much sought after and the idol of brilliant companions, at the age of twenty-six she abandoned the world to devote herself to God.  At thirty-six years of age she died of sorrow and remorse for having signed an equivocal formulary of Pope Alexander VI., “through pure deference to the authority of her superiors.”  The papal decision concerning Jansenius’s book, already mentioned, was drawn up in a formula “turned with some skill, and in such a way that subscription did not bind the conscience; however, the nuns of Port-Royal refused to sign.”  Jacqueline Pascal wrote: 

“That which hinders us, what hinders all the ecclesiastics who recognize the truth from replying when the formulary is presented to them to subscribe is:  I know the respect I owe the bishops, but my conscience does not permit me to subscribe that a thing is in a book in which I have not seen it—­and after that, wait for what will happen.  What have we to fear?  Banishment and dispersion for the nuns, seizure of temporalities, imprisonment, and death if you will; but is not that our glory and should it not be our joy?  Let us either renounce the Gospel or faithfully follow the maxims of that Gospel and deem ourselves happy to suffer somewhat for righteousness’ sake.  I know that it is not for daughters to defend the truth, though, unfortunately, one might say that since the bishops have the courage of daughters, the daughters must have the courage of bishops; but, if it is not for us to defend the truth, it is for us to die for the truth and to suffer everything rather than abandon it.”

She subscribed, “divided between her instinctive repugnance and her desire to show herself an humble daughter of the Catholic Church.”  She said:  “It is all we can concede; for the rest, come what may,—­poverty, dispersion, imprisonment, death,—­all those seem to me nothing in comparison with the anguish in which I should pass the remainder of my life, if I had been wretch enough to make a covenant with death on the occasion of so excellent an opportunity for proving to God the sincerity of the vows of fidelity which our lips have pronounced.”  According to Mme. Perier, the health of the writer of the above epistle was so undermined by the shock which all that commotion had caused her, that she became dangerously ill, dying soon after.  Thus was sacrificed the first victim of the formulary.

Cousin says that few women of the seventeenth century were as brilliantly endowed as Jacqueline Pascal; possessing the finesse, energy, and sobriety of her brother, she was capable of the most serious work, and yet knew perfectly how to lead in a social circle.  Also, she was most happily gifted with a talent for poetry, in relation to which her reputation was everywhere recognized; at the convent, she consulted her superiors as to the advisability of continuing her verse making; and upon being told that such occupation was not a means of winning the grace of Jesus Christ, she abandoned it.