wished to make over her patrimony to the Order; whereas while she lived
with him, their combined resources made it possible for him to live more
nearly on a scale of expense congenial to his tastes. He liked, in fact,
not only to mix with the best society, but to keep a coach and
horses--six horses is the number at one time attributed to his carriage.
Though he had no legal power 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, Mère
Angélique--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.