The careful and systematic education which he gave to his son would alone have stamped him as a man of remarkable intelligence.
Gilberte, Pascal’s elder sister and biographer, exerted an influence upon his character only second to that of his father. She married her cousin, M. Périer, also of a Parliamentary family, and Counsellor of the Court of Aides at Clermont. She was alike beautiful and page 7accomplished, a student of mathematics, philosophy, and history. 4 For a time she shared in the enjoyments of the world, like other persons of her age and condition; but the same impulses of religious enthusiasm which animated the rest of her family led to her practical abandonment of the world while still young. The memoirs which she composed, both of her brother and sister, and her letters, all indicate a high intelligence and a mingled dignity, sweetness, and restraint of character, which made her their best counsellor and friend.
The younger sister, Jacqueline, has been made a special study by M. Cousin amongst the ‘Illustrious Women of the Seventeenth Century.’ She was beautiful as her sister, and a child of genius like her brother. She began to compose verses at the age of eight, and in her eleventh year assisted in the composition and the acting of a comedy in five acts, which was a subject of universal talk in Paris. Her powers, both as an actor and a verse-maker, made a wonderful reputation at the time, which, as we shall see, was highly serviceable to her after. Her verses, it must be confessed, are somewhat artificial and hollow; but her letters, and, more remarkable than either her verses or her letters, her ‘Thoughts’ on the ‘Mystery of the Death of Christ,’ are in some respects very fine, and might even claim a place beside some of those of her brother. They are equally elevated in tone, and pervaded by the same subtle, penetrating, radiant mysticism, the same rapture of self-sacrificing aspiration, page 8though lacking the glow of inward fire and exquisite charm of style which marked the author of the ‘Pensées.’ Noble-minded and full of genius, she was yet without his depth and power of feeling, or his skill