One day, in the month of October, he was taking an airing in a carriage-and-four towards the Pont de Neuilli, when the leaders took the bit in their teeth, at a spot where there is no parapet, and precipitated themselves into the Seine: fortunately the shock broke the traces, and the carriage remained on the brink of the precipice. Pascal, a feeble, half-paralytic, trembling being, was overwhelmed by the shock. He fell into a succession of fainting fits, followed by a nervous agitation that prevented sleep, and brought on a state resembling delirium. In this he experienced a sort of vision, or extatic trance; in commemoration of which he wrote a singular sort of memorandum, which, though incoherent to us, doubtless brought to his memory the circumstances of his vision. This paper he always kept sewn up in his dress. The effect of the circumstance was to make him look on his accident as a call from Heaven to give in all worldly thoughts, and to devote himself to God. The pious exhortations of his sister, the nun, had before given him some notion of such a course; and he determined to renounce the world, and to dedicate himself exclusively to religious practices. The account that his sister, madame Périer, gives of the rules of life to which he adhered is most deeply interesting, as appertaining to a man of such transcendent genius; and yet deeply painful, since we cannot see that God could be pleased or served by his cutting himself off from the enjoyment of all the natural and innocent affections, or by a system of self-denial, that undermined his health and shortened his life. To follow up the new rules he had laid down for his conduct, he removed to another part of Paris; and showed so determined a resolve to renounce the world that, at last, the world renounced him. In this retreat he disciplined his life by certain principles, the chief of which was to abstain from all pleasures or superfluity; in accordance with this system, he allowed himself nothing but what was absolutely necessary; he unfurnished his apartment of all carpets and hangings, reserving only a table and chairs, of the coarsest manufacture: he also, as much as possible, denied himself the service of domestics: he made his bed himself; and went to the kitchen to fetch his dinner, and carried it into his own room, and took back the remains when he had finished: in short, his servant merely cooked and went to market for him. His time was otherwise spent in acts of charity, in prayer, and in reading the scriptures. At first the regularity and quiet of a life of retreat recruited somewhat his shattered frame: but this did not last. His mind could not be idle, nor his reasoning powers remain inactive; and he soon found cause to study as deeply matters connected with religion as before he had applied himself to the investigation of mathematical truths.