CHAPTER V. THE ‘PROVINCIAL LETTERS.’

It is in hits like these, everywhere scattered throughout the earlier letters, to which no translation can do justice, and which lose half their edge by being separated from their context, that the wit of Pascal shines.  A more delicate, and at the same time more scathing irony, cannot be conceived.  He hits with the lightest stroke, and in the most natural manner, yet his lash cuts the flesh, and leaves an intolerable smart.  All that could be said in answer was, that his representations were lies.  They were conscious exaggerations, no doubt, as all satirical representations are.  This is of their very nature.  But the extent to which they told, and the bitterness of the feeling which they excited at the time, and have continued to excite amongst the Jesuits and their friends, show how much truth there was in them.  Nothing can be more pitiful and less satisfactory than mere complaints of their falsehood.  Such complaints were hardly to have been expected from any other quarter than the Jesuits themselves.  Yet even Chateaubriand, in his new-born zeal for the Church, could say of their author, “Pascal is only a calumniator of genius.  He has left us an immortal lie.”