impregnated to its core by a subtle controversial ecclesiasticism, to realise the impression made by “the Small Letters.” The question everywhere was, Who could have written them? There seems at first to have been no suspicion of Pascal. He had previously only been known as a scientific writer; and the secret was, of course, jealously guarded. Although planned at Port Royal des Champs, he did not remain there while engaged in their composition. He repaired, as we have already said, to Paris, and after a while took up his abode “at a little inn opposite to page 132the Jesuit College of Clermont, just behind the Sorbonne.” Here he lodged with his brother-in-law, M. Périer, who had lately come to Paris; and here, too, the latter was visited by Père Defrétat, a Jesuit and distant relative, who came to tell him that the suspicions of the Society were beginning to point to Pascal. All the while Pascal was busy in the room below; and, “behind the closed curtains of the bed by the side of which they were talking, a score of fresh impressions of the seventh Letter were laid out to dry.”8
Pascal rejoiced in his incognito. It was not till the controversy had somewhat advanced that he assumed the pseudonym Louis de Montalte. The third Letter he closed mysteriously with the letters E. A. A. B. P. A. F. D. E. P., which have been interpreted to mean