Pascal rejoiced in his incognito. It was not till the controversy had somewhat advanced that he assumed the pseudonym Louis de Montalte. The third Letter he closed mysteriously with the letters E. A. A. B. P. A. F. D. E. P., which have been interpreted to mean “Et ancien ami Blaise Pascal, Auvergnat, fils de Étienne Pascal.” There can be no doubt that he took a distinct pleasure in the anonymous wounds which he inflicted. He had a certain love of controversy from the beginning, a feeling of self-assertion when he took up a cause, and a personal ambition to triumph in it, which carried him forward, and which come out with almost painful vividness in the closing letters. The rage of the Jesuits may be imagined. At first they hardly knew whether to laugh with the world or to be indignant. The first Letter was read in the dining-hall of the Sorbonne itself. Some were amused, others greatly provoked. But, as the Letters proceeded, there was no room for any feeling but indignation. It was so difficult to set forth any direct reply to productions mingling such a subtle irony with grave attack. They could only say of them, as they afterwards more formally did—_Les menteurs immortelles_. Of the first Letters it is said that 6000 copies were printed; but, as they were easily passed from hand to hand, this gives no idea of the numbers who actually read them. Their fame grew with each successive issue. More than 10,000 copies were printed of the seventeenth Letter; and editions of the earlier ones were so frequently reprinted, that it can no longer be told which belonged really to the first edition. It is impossible, and would be useless, for us to attempt any description of the whole series of Letters. We have thought it right to dwell at some length on the first two, because they enter so directly into the controversy betwixt Pascal’s friends and the Sorbonne, and because they are really, in some respects, the cleverest, if not the most valuable. The third Letter, on the “Censure of M. Arnauld,” and again, the three concluding Letters, {133} are closely connected with the first two. Their object, in one form or another, is the defence of the Jansenist doctrine, and of the Port Royalists, as its supporters. The intervening twelve Letters stand quite by themselves. They open up the whole subject of the moral theology of the Jesuits, and constitute the most powerful assault probably ever directed against it. The subject is one which, in a volume like this, we can only touch upon, and this more with the view of drawing out the marked literary features of Pascal’s assault, than of meddling with the merits of the controversy which he waged so relentlessly. In the meantime, we must wind up, as briefly as possible, the more personal aspects of the controversy.