It was to the same end that he composed the _Lettres Provinciales,_ the first of which was written in six days, and the style of which, clear, lively, precise, far removed from the somewhat solemn gravity of Port-Royal, formed French prose as Malherbe and Boileau formed the poetry.

This was the impression of his contemporaries, the most hard of them to please in the art of writing.
"That is excellent; that will be relished," said the recluses of Port- Royal, in spite of the misgivings of M.Singlin.

More than thirty years after Pascal's ddath, Madame de Sevigne, in 1689, wrote to Madame de Grignan, "Sometimes, to divert ourselves, we read the little Letters (to a provincial).

Good heavens, how charming! And how my son reads them! I always think of my daughter, and how that excess of correctness of reasoning would suit her; but your brother says that you consider that it is always the same thing over again.

Ah! My goodness, so much the better! Could any one have a more perfect style, a raillery more refined, more natural, more delicate, worthier offspring of those dialogues of Plato, which are so fine?
And when, after the first ten letters, he addresses himself to the reverend Jesuit fathers, what earnestness, what solidity, what force! What eloquence! What love for God and for the truth! What a way of maintaining it and making it understood! I am sure that you have never read them but in a hurry, pitching on the pleasant places; but it is not so when they are read at leisure." Lord Macaulay once said to M.Guizot, "Amongst modern works I know only two perfect ones, to which there is no exception to be taken, and they are _Pascal's Provincials_ and the _Letters of Madame de Sevigne_." [Illustration: Blaise Pascal----597] Boileau was of Lord Macaulay's opinion; at least as regarded Pascal.
"Corbinelli wrote to me the other day," says Madame de Sevigne, on the 15th of January, 1690: "he gave me an account of a conversation and a dinner at M.de Lamoignon's: the persons were the master and mistress of the house, M.de Troyes, M.de Toulon, Father Bourdaloue, a comrade of his, Desprdaux, and Corbinelli.