CHAPTER IV. PORT ROYAL AND PASCAL’S LATER YEARS.

in the end of 1661, when his sufferings were fast drawing to a close. In the previous summer, when at Clermont, he had written to Fermat that he was so weak as to be “unable to walk without a stick, or to hold himself on horseback.” His weakness had grown apace, and in June 1662 he was seized with his last illness. It was necessary that his sister should nurse him, and this could only be done by his removal to her house, for he had given up his own house to a poor family, one of whose children had taken smallpox, and he would allow neither the child to be removed nor his sister to run the risk of carrying infection to her children. He left his own home for hers, therefore, on the 27th of June, and never returned. Three days after his removal he was seized with a violent colic, which deprived him of all sleep. His physicians at first were not alarmed, as his pulse continued good, but gradually pain and sleeplessness wore him out. He confessed both to the curé of the parish and to his friend Sainte-Marthe, one of the directors of the community. He wished, as we said, to die in the Hospital for Incurables amongst the poor, but in his state of weakness it was impossible to gratify this wish. After the administration of the last sacrament, which he received with tearful emotion, he thanked the curé, and exclaimed, “May God never leave me!” These were his last words. Convulsions having returned, he expired on the 19th of August 1662.