I thought on thee in my agony; such drops of blood I shed for thee.
It is austerity again, but not unjust austerity, that speaks as follows:
Religion is a thing so great that those who would not take the pains to seek it if it is obscure, should be deprived of it. What do they complain of, then, if it is such that they could find it by seeking it?
But we must take our leave of Pascal. His was a suffering as well as an aspiring spirit. He suffered because he aspired. But, at least, he did not suffer long. He aspired himself quickly away. Toward the last he wrought at a problem in his first favorite study, that of mathematics, and left behind him, as a memorial of his later life, a remarkable result of investigation on the curve called the cycloid. During his final illness he pierced himself through with many sorrows—unnecessary sorrows, sorrows, too, that bore a double edge, hurting not only him, but also his kindred—in practicing, from mistaken religious motives, a hard repression upon his natural instinct to love, and to welcome love. He thought that God should be all, the creature nothing. The thought was half true, but it was half false. God should, indeed, be all. But, in God, the creature also should be something.
In French history—we may say, in the history of the world—if there are few brighter, there also are few purer, fames than the fame of Pascal.
IX.
MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ.