The wager at Port-Royal

Pascal has withdrawn from the world to Port-Royal, but he keeps a table in Paris for visitors whose minds he respects. Spinoza, in the city on business, and Locke, travelling as a young physician and diplomat, have both come at his invitation.

Pascal lays out the wager over mutton pottage and a game pie: since reason cannot decide the question of God, the wise man weighs the stakes. Spinoza objects that a wager cannot manufacture belief and that the argument demeans the love of understanding; Locke objects that the probabilities are not equal. Pascal, who is ill and knows he has not long to live, is unbothered. The evening ends over marchpane and a posset.