"This is the very day," he wrote to his sister, Mother Angelica, "when I am to be wiped out from the number of the doctors; I hope of God's goodness that He will not on that account wipe me out from the number of His servants.

That is the only title I desire to preserve." M.Arnauld's friends pressed him to protest against his condemnation.

"Would you let yourself be crushed like a child ?" they said.

He wrote in the theologian's vein, lengthily and bitterly; his friends listened in silence.

Arnauld understood them.
"I see quite well that you do not consider this document a good one for its purpose," said he, "and I think you are right; but you who are young," and he turned towards Pascal, who had a short time since retired to Port-Royal, "you ought to do something." This was the origin of the _Lettres Provinciales_.