[41] Act II, sc. iv. in Œuvres Comiques, etc., ed. Jacob, rep. by Garnier, pp. 426–27. [↑]
[42] See Jacob’s note in loc., ed. cited, p. 455. [↑]
[43] E.g. his Lettre contre un Pédant (No. 13 of the Lettres Satiriques in ed. cited, p. 181), which, however, appears to have been mutilated in some editions; as one of the deistic sentences cited by M. Perrens, p. 247, does not appear in the reprint of Bibliophile Jacob. [↑]
[44] E.g. the Histoire des Oiseaux in the Histoire Comique des états et empires du Soleil, ed. Jacob (Garnier), p. 278; and the Fragment de Physique (same vol.). [↑]
[45] See the careful criticism of Perrens, pp. 248–50. [↑]
[46] Bibliophile Jacob, pref. to ed. cited, pp. i-ii. [↑]
[47] Perrens, p. 302. Compare Bossuet’s earlier sermon for the Second Sunday of Advent, 1665, cited by Perrens, pp. 253–54, where he speaks with something like fury of the free discussion around him. [↑]
[48] Cousin plausibly argues that Pascal began writing Pensées under the influence of a practice set up in her circle by Madame de Sablé. Mme. de Sablé, 5e édit. p. 124 sq. [↑]
[49] It is to be remembered that the work as published contained matter not Pascal’s. Cp. Brunetière, Études, iii, 46–47; and the editions of the Pensées by Faugère and Havet. [↑]
[50] As to some of these see Perrens, pp. 158–69. They included the great Condé and some of the women in his circle; all of them unserious in their skepticism, and all “converted” when the physique gave the required cue. [↑]