This, however, was not all. Besides having the tide of public favor turned against them, the Jesuits found themselves the objects of universal derision. The names of their favorite casuists were converted into proverbs: Escobarder came to signify the same thing with “paltering in a double sense;” Father Bauny’s grotesque maxims furnished topics for perpetual badinage; and the Jesuits, wherever they went, were assailed with inextinguishable laughter. By no other method could Pascal have so severely stung this proud and self-conceited Society. The rage into which they were thrown was extreme, and was variously expressed. At one time it found vent in calumnies and threats of vengeance. At other times they indulged in puerile lamentations. It was amusing to hear these stalwart divines, after breathing fire and slaughter against their enemies, assume the querulous tones of injured and oppressed innocence. “The persecution which the Jesuits suffer from the buffooneries of Port-Royal,” they said, “is perfectly intolerable: the wheel and the gibbet are nothing to it; it can only be compared to the torture inflicted on the ancient martyrs, who were first rubbed over with honey and then left to be stung to death by wasps and wild bees. Their tyrants have subjected them to empoisoned raillery, and the world leaves them unpitied to suffer a sweet death, more cruel in its sweetness than the bitterest punishment.”[[38]]
The Letters were published anonymously, under the fictitious signature of Louis de Montalte, and the greatest care was taken to preserve the secret of their authorship. As on all such occasions, many were the guesses made, and the false reports circulated; but beyond the circle of Pascal’s personal friends, none knew him to be the author, nor was the fact certainly or publicly known till after his death. The following anecdote shows, however, that he was suspected, and was once very nearly discovered: After publishing the third letter, Pascal left Port-Royal des Champs, to avoid being disturbed, and took up his residence in Paris, under the name of M. de Mons, in a hotel garni, at the sign of the King of Denmark, Rue des Poiriers, exactly opposite the college of the Jesuits. Here he was joined by his brother-in-law, Perrier, who passed as the master of the house. One day Perrier received a visit from his relative, Father Frétat, a Jesuit, accompanied by a brother monk. Frétat told him that the Society suspected M. Pascal to be the author of the “Little Letters,” which were making such a noise, and advised him as a friend to prevail on his brother-in-law to desist from writing any more of them, as he might otherwise involve himself in much trouble, and even danger. Perrier thanked him for his advice, but said he was afraid it would be altogether useless, as Pascal would just reply that he could not hinder people from suspecting him, and that though he should deny it they would not believe him. The monks took their departure, much to the relief of Perrier, for at that very time several sheets of the seventh or eighth letter, newly come from the printer, were lying on the bed, where they had been placed for the purpose of drying, but, fortunately, though the curtains were only partially drawn, and one of the monks sat very close to the bed, they were not observed. Perrier ran immediately to communicate the incident to his brother-in-law, who was in an adjoining apartment; and he had reason to congratulate him on the narrow escape which he had made.[[39]]
As Pascal proceeded, he transmitted his manuscripts to Port-Royal des Champs, where they were carefully revised and corrected by Arnauld and Nicole. Occasionally, these expert divines suggested the plans of the letters; and by them he was, beyond all doubt, furnished with most of his quotations from the voluminous writings of the casuists, which, with the exception of Escobar, he appears never to have read. We must not suppose, however, that he took these on trust, or gave himself no trouble to verify them. We shall afterwards have proof of the contrary. The first letters he composed with the rapidity of new-born enthusiasm; but the pains and mental exertion which he bestowed on the rest are almost incredible. Nicole says “he was often twenty whole days on a single letter: and some of them he recommenced seven or eight times before bringing them to their present state of perfection.”[[40]] We are assured that he wrote over the eighteenth letter no less than thirteen times.[[41]] Having been obliged to hasten the publication of the sixteenth, on account of a search made after it in the printing office, he apologizes for its length on the ground that “he had found no time to make it shorter.”[[42]]
The fruits of this extraordinary elaboration appear in every letter; but what is equally remarkable, is the art with which so many detached letters, written at distant intervals, and prompted by passing events, have been so arranged as to form an harmonious whole. The first three letters refer to Arnauld’s affair; the questions of grace are but slightly touched, the main object being to interest the reader in favor of the Jansenists, and excite his contempt and indignation against their opponents. After this prelude, the fourth letter serves as a transition to the following six, in which he takes up maxims of the casuists. In the eight concluding letters he resumes the grand objects of the work—the morals of the Jesuits and the question of grace. These three parts have each their peculiar style. The first is distinguished for lively dialogue and repartee. Jacobins, Molinists, and Jansenists are brought on the stage, and speak in character, while Pascal does little more than act as reporter. In the second part, he comes into personal contact with a casuistical doctor, and extracts from him, under the pretext of desiring information, some of the weakest and worst of his maxims. At the eleventh letter, Pascal throws off his disguise, and addressing himself directly to the whole order of the Jesuits, and to their Provincial by name, he pours out his whole soul in an impetuous and impassioned torrent of declamation. From beginning to end it is a well-sustained battle, in which the weapons are only changed in order to strike the harder.
The literary merits of the Provincials have been universally acknowledged and applauded. On this point, where Pascal’s countrymen must be considered the most competent judges, we have the testimonies of the leading spirits of France. Boileau pronounced it a work that has “surpassed at once the ancients and the moderns.” Perrault has given a similar judgment: “There is more wit in these eighteen letters than in Plato’s Dialogues; more delicate and artful raillery than in those of Lucian; and more strength and ingenuity of reasoning than in the orations of Cicero. We have nothing more beautiful in this species of writing.”[[43]] “Pascal’s style,” says the Abbé d’Artigny, “has never been surpassed, nor perhaps equalled.”[[44]] The high encomium of Voltaire is well known: “The Provincial Letters were models of eloquence and pleasantry. The best comedies of Molière have not more wit in them than the first letters; Bossuet has nothing more sublime than the last ones.” Again, the same writer says: “The first work of genius that appeared in prose was the collection of the Provincial Letters. Examples of every species of eloquence may there be found. There is not a single word in it which, after a hundred years, has undergone the change to which all living languages are liable. We may refer to this work the era when our language became fixed. The Bishop of Luçon told me, that having asked the Bishop of Meaux what work he would wish most to have been the author of, setting his own works aside, Bossuet instantly replied, ‘The Provincial Letters.’”[[45]] “Pascal succeeded beyond all expression,” says D’Alembert; “several of his bon-mots have become proverbial in our language, and the Provincials will be ever regarded as a model of taste and style.”[[46]] To this day the same high eulogiums are passed on the work by the best scholars of France.[[47]]
To these testimonies it would be superfluous to add any criticism of our own, were it not to prepare the English reader for the peculiar character of our author’s style. Pascal’s wit is essentially French. It is not the broad humor of Smollet; it is not the cool irony of Swift; far less is it the envenomed sarcasm of Junius. It is wit—the lively, polite, piquant wit of the early French school. Nothing can be finer than its spirit; but from its very fineness it is apt to evaporate in the act of transfusion into another tongue. Nothing can be more ingenious than the transitions by which the author glides insensibly from one topic to another; and in the more serious letters, we cannot fail to be struck with the mathematical precision of his reasoning. But there is a species of iteration, and a style of dovetailing his sentiments, which does not quite accord with our taste; and the foreign texture of which, in spite of every effort to the contrary, must shine through any translation.
High as the Provincials stand in the literary world, they were not suffered to pass without censure in the high places of the Church. The first effect of their publication, indeed, was to raise a storm against the casuists, whom Pascal had so effectually exposed. The curés of Paris, and afterwards the assembly of the clergy, shocked at the discovery of such a sink of corruption, the existence of which, though just beneath their feet, they never appear to have suspected, determined to institute an examination into the subject. Hitherto the tenets of the casuists, buried in huge folios, or only taught in the colleges of the Jesuits, had escaped public observation. The clergy resolved to compare the quotations of Pascal with these writings; and the result of the investigation was, that he was found to be perfectly correct, while a multitude of other maxims, equally scandalous, were dragged to light. These were condemned in a general assembly of the clergy.[[48]] Unfortunately for the Jesuits, they had not a single writer at the time capable of conducting their vindication. Several replies to the Provincials were attempted while they were in the course of publication; but these were taken up by the redoubtable Montalte, and fairly strangled at their birth.[[49]] Shortly after the Letters were finished, there appeared “An Apology for the Casuists,” the production of a Jesuit named Pirot, who, with a folly and frankness which proved nearly as fatal to his order as it did to himself, attempted to vindicate the worst maxims of the casuistical school. This Apology was condemned by the Sorbonne, and subsequently at Rome; its author died of chagrin, and the Jesuits fell into temporary disgrace.[[50]]
But, with that tenaciousness of life and elasticity of limb which have ever distinguished the Society, it was not long before they rebounded from their fall and regained their feet. Unable to answer the Letters, they succeeded in obtaining, in February, 1657, their condemnation by the Parliament of Provence, by whose orders they were burnt on the pillory by the hands of the common executioner. Not content with this clumsy method of refutation, they succeeded in procuring the formal condemnation of the Provincials by a censure of the pope, Alexander VII., dated 6th September, 1657. In this decree the work is “prohibited and condemned, under the pains and censures contained in the Council of Trent, and in the index of prohibited books, and other pains and censures which it may please his holiness to ordain.” It is almost needless to say, that these sentences neither enhanced nor lessened the fame of the Provincials. It must be interesting to know what the feelings of Pascal were, on learning that this work, into which he had thrown his whole heart, and mind, and strength, and which may be said to have been at once his chef-d’œuvre and his confession of faith, had been condemned by the head of that Church which he had hitherto believed to be infallible. Warped as his fine spirit was by education, his unbending rectitude forbids the supposition that he could surrender his cherished and conscientious sentiments at the mere dictum of the pope. An incident occurred in 1661, shortly before his death, strikingly illustrative of his conscientiousness, and of the sincerity of purpose with which the Letters were written. The persecution had begun to rage against Port-Royal; one mandement after another, requiring subscription to the condemnation of Jansen, came down from the court of Rome; and the poor nuns, shrinking, on the one hand, from violating their consciences by subscribing what they believed to be an untruth, and trembling, on the other, at the consequences of disobeying their ecclesiastical superiors, were thrown into the most distressing embarrassment. Their “obstinacy,” as it was termed, only provoked their persecutors to more stringent demands. In these circumstances, even the stern Arnauld and the conscientious Nicole were tempted to make some compromise, and drew up a declaration to accompany the signature of the nuns, which they thought might save at once the truth and their consistency. To this Pascal objected, as not sufficiently clear, and as leaving it to be inferred that they condemned “efficacious grace.” He could not endure the idea of their employing an ambiguous statement, which appeared, or might be supposed by their opponents, to grant what they did not really mean to concede. The consequence was a slight and temporary dispute—not affecting principle so much as the mode of maintaining it—in which Pascal stood alone against all the members of Port-Royal. On one occasion, after exhausting his eloquence upon them without success, he was so deeply affected, that his feeble frame, laboring under headache and other disorders, sunk under the excitement, and he fell into a swoon. After recovering his consciousness, he explained the cause of his sudden illness, in answer to the affectionate inquiries of his sister: “When I saw those,” he said, “whom I regard as the persons to whom God has made known his truth, and who ought to be its champions, all giving way, I was so overcome with grief that I could stand it no longer.” Subsequent mandements, still more stringent, soon saved the poor nuns from the temptation of ambiguous submissions, and reconciled Pascal and his friends.[[51]]
But we are fortunately furnished with his own reflections on the subject of the Provincials, in his celebrated “Thoughts on Religion:”
“I feared,” says he, “that I might have written erroneously, when I saw myself condemned; but the example of so many pious witnesses made me think differently. It is no longer allowable to write truth. If my letters are condemned at Rome, that which I condemn in them is condemned in heaven.”[[52]]