“He joins in every office of the Church from Prime to Compline, without feeling the slightest inconvenience in rising at five o’clock in the morning; and as if it was the will of God that he should join fasting to watching, in defiance of all the medical prescriptions which had forbidden him both the one and the other, he found that supper disagreed with him, and was about to give it up.” [77]
Such is the story of Pascal’s final conversion and retirement from the world. Jacqueline’s details fill in the briefer sketch of Madame Périer, and both tell the
story at first hand. None could have known so well as they did all the circumstances. It is remarkable, therefore, that neither of them says anything of the well-known incident, emphasised by Bossut as the mainly exciting cause of his great change:—
“One day,” it is said, “in the month of October 1654, when he went, according to his habit, to take his drive to the bridge of Neuilly in a carriage and four, the two leading horses became restive at a part of the road where there was a parapet, and precipitated themselves into the Seine. Fortunately, the first strokes of their feet broke the traces which attached them to the pole, and the carriage was stayed on the brink of the precipice. The effect of such a shock on one of Pascal’s feeble health may be imagined. He swooned away, and was only restored with difficulty, and his nerves were so shattered that long afterwards, during sleepless nights and during moments of weakness, he seemed to see a precipice at his bedside, over which he was on the point of falling.”
This alarming incident, which comes from nearly contemporary tradition, no doubt contributed to Pascal’s retirement from the world, and no less probably also a strange vision he had at this time, to which we shall afterwards advert. But it is peculiarly interesting to trace the inner history of Pascal’s great change. Evidently, from what his sister says, his mind had been for some time very ill at ease in the great world in which he lived. How far this was the working of his old religious convictions continually renewing their influence through the conversation of his sister, how far it was mere weariness and disgust with the frivolities of fashionable life, and how far it may have been baffled hope and the disenchantments of a broken dream of love, we cannot clearly tell. All may have moved him, and brought
him to that strange state of isolation which she describes from his own account. But plainly the world-weariness preceded the fresh dawn of divine strength in his heart; and there is a tone of hopelessness in speaking of his detachment from all the things surrounding him, which favours the thought that some new and unwonted smart had entered into his life, and driven him forth to the quiet shelter, where at length he found his old peace with God, and the great mission to which God had called him.
* * * * *
The monastery of Port Royal, in which his sister had already found a home, remains indelibly associated with Pascal. It was founded in the beginning of the thirteenth century, in the reign of Philip Augustus; and a later tradition claimed this magnificent monarch as the author of its foundation and of its name. It is said that one day he wandered into the famous valley during the chase, and became lost in its woods, when he was at length discovered near to an ancient chapel of St Lawrence, which was much frequented by the devout of the neighbourhood, and that, grateful because the place had been to him a Port Royal or royal refuge, he resolved to build a church there. But this is the story of a time when, as it has been said, “royal founders were in fashion.” More truly, the name is considered to be derived from the general designation of the fief or district in which the valley lies, Porrois—which, again, is supposed to be a corruption of Porra or Borra, meaning a marshy and woody hollow.
The valley of Port Royal presents to this day the same natural features which attracted the eye of the devout
solitary in the seventeenth century. Some years ago I paid a long-wished-for visit to it. It lies about eighteen miles west of Paris, and seven or eight from Versailles, on the road to Chevreuse. As the traveller approaches it from Versailles, the long lines of a level and somewhat dreary road, only relieved by rows of tall poplar-trees, break into a more picturesque country. An antique mouldering village, with quaint little church, its grey lichen-marked stones brightened by the warm sunshine of a September day, and the straggling vines drooping their pale dusty leaves over the cottage-doors, made a welcome variety in the monotonous landscape. How hazy yet cheerful was the brightness in which the poor mean houses seemed to sleep! After this the road swept down a long declivity, crowned on one side by an irregular outline of wood, and presenting here and there broken and dilapidated traces of former habitations. The famous valley of Port Royal lay before us. It was a quiet and peaceful yet gloomy scene. The seclusion was perfect. No hum of cheerful industry enlivened the desolate space. An air rather as of long-continued neglect rested on ruined garden and terraces, on farmhouse and dovecot, and the remains as of a chapel nearer at hand. The more minutely the eye took in the scene, the more sad seemed its wasted recesses and the few monuments of its departed glories. The stillness as of a buried past lay all about, and it required an effort of imagination to people the valley with the sacred activities of the seventeenth century.