wer to prevent his sister from disposing of her
property as she elected, the amiable Jacqueline shrank from doing so
without her brother's willing approval. The Mother Superior, Mere
Angelique--herself an eminent personage in the history of this religious
movement--finally persuaded the young novice to enter the order without
the satisfaction of bringing her patrimony with her; but Jacqueline
remained so distressed by this situation that her brother finally
relented.

So far as is known, the worldly life enjoyed by Pascal during this
period can hardly be qualified as "dissipation," and certainly not as
"debauchery." Even gambling may have appealed to him chiefly as
affording a study of mathematical probabilities. He appears to have led
such a life as any cultivated intellectual man of good position and
independent means might lead and consider himself a model of probity and
virtue. Not even a love-affair is laid at his door, though he is said to
have contemplated marriage. But Jansenism, as represented by the
religious society of Port-Royal, was morally a Puritan movement within
the Church, and its standards of conduct were at least as severe as
those of any Puritanism in England or America. The period of fashionable
society, in Pascal's life, is however, of great importance in his
development. It enlarged his knowledge of men and refined his tastes; he
became a man of the world and never lost what he had learnt; and when he
turned his thoughts wholly towards religion, his worldly knowledge was a
part of his composition which is essential to the value of his work.

Pascal's interest in society did not distract him from scientific
research; nor did this period occupy much space in what is a very short
and crowded life. Partly his natural dissatisfaction with such a life,
once he had learned all it had to teach him, partly the influence of his
saintly sister Jacqueline, partly increasing suffering as his health
declined, directed him more and more out of the world and to thoughts of
eternity. And in 1654 occurs what is called his "second conversion," but
which might be called his conversion simply.

He made a note of his mystical experience, which he kept always about
him, and which was found, after his death, sewn into the coat which he
was wearing. The experience occurred on 23 November, 1654, and there is
no reason to doubt its genuineness unless we choose to deny all mystical
experience. Now, Pascal was not a mystic