restore his health, and because he thought that trivial amusements could not harm him. So he set himself on the world.” When this definite change in Pascal’s life began is left uncertain, but there are indications that he had largely abandoned his studies in 1649 and the following year. During these years there is nothing from his pen. The interval between the “recital” of the experiments on the Puy de Dôme (1648), and his letter to M. Ribeyre, page 5512th July 1651, is blank in any record of scientific or literary labour. This is not conclusive, of course, that he was idle; but taken in connection with the remarks of his sister, and the retirement to Auvergne, it suggests that the family may have sought there, in rural isolation and domestic reunion, the means of entirely withdrawing Pascal from his severer studies, and the scientific companions who were constantly prompting them in Paris. It may be, also, that the father sought the means of withdrawing Jacqueline from the neighbourhood of Port Royal, and from the equally exciting associations to her connected with that neighbourhood.
Of Pascal’s life at this time in Auvergne we know nothing, or next to nothing. There is, indeed, a single trace, of which the most has been made, in the Memoirs of Fléchier, describing his stay at Clermont in 1665 and 1666, a few years after Pascal’s death. In these Memoirs, Fléchier relates an anecdote of a young lady “who was the Sappho of the country,” and greatly beloved by all the beaux esprits of the time. Amongst others, “M. Pascal, who had then acquired so much reputation, and another savant, were continually with this belle savante.” It is difficult to know what to make of this vague if piquant anecdote. Some of Pascal’s more religious admirers have even been scandalised by it, and have tried to show that it could not refer to the author of the ‘Pensées.’ M. Cousin and other parties have emphasised it too much.3 There seems no reason to doubt that the anecdote relates to the younger Pascal—it cannot reasonably be supposed to relate to his father. Nor is there any ground to suppose that Pascal page 56was less likely to be interested in a beautiful and accomplished demoiselle than any other young