Oiron castle's frustrated loves: Blaise Pascal and his Charlotte
And also
The tops
And now, let me introduce Charlotte de Gouffier, duchesse de Roannez, the Puss in Boots’ grand grand daughter. This miss had a lovely love affair, in Oiron… falling in love with the famous French mathematician Blaise Pascal!
1652. Summer in Oiron. Charlotte, her brother Artus and Blaise Pascal had a stroll in the park.
They met in Paris, while Blaise and his father was moving in. In the neighbouring house lived the duke of Roannez.
Blaise was 25 years old, Charlotte 15. Artus, 18, immediately get along with Blaise because he loved sciences. He invited him in Oiron, in the summer of 1652. But Blaise and Charlotte loved each other! He wanted to marry her. But he wasn’t noble, ouch, big problem… the wedding was impossible because of that.
Charlotte’s parents didn’t want Blaise as a son-in-law, so they asked him to leave Oiron. That’s why Blaise wrote his Discours sur les passions de l’amour, where he talked about his regrets and his huge despair because he couldn’t marry his love.
He drove her to the holy orders, in Port-Royal abbey, to “marry” her to God, his only possible rival… Here’s the story.
Charlotte, who was now 23, had to marry the marquis d’Alluye. But as she went to the Mass with her mother in Port-Royal in Paris, she felt like a strange feeling: she had to take the holy order, immediately!
She said this to her brother, asked Blaise’s advice (who was like a spiritual councillor for the family). Her parents took her in Oiron so she could rest and think about that, in 1657: there Blaise and her wrote letters. There also, he drove her to Port-Royal. In a fit of pique?
Her parents forced her to go out from the convent, but she refused. She stayed in the abbey (becoming sister Charlotte of the Passion) in spite of her parents’ refusal, she took a vow of chastity until Blaise’s death.
In 1667, 5 years after his death, she finally decided to marry the duke of Feuillade, at the age of 34. But she would always love Blaise. Inconsolable and ill, she died after 15 years of a sad and dull life. Her son sold the castle of Oiron to the marquise de Montespan…