structural:scholar_edition, structural:expansion, linguistic:voice_change, information:extraction
Move to Paris

In 1631, five years after the death of his wife, Étienne Pascal moved with his children to Paris. The newly arrived family soon hired Louise Delfault, a maid who eventually became a key member of the family. Étienne, who never remarried, decided that he alone would educate his children.

The young Pascal showed an extraordinary intellectual ability, with an amazing aptitude for mathematics and science. Etienne had tried to keep his son from learning mathematics; but by the age of 12, Pascal had rediscovered, on his own, using charcoal on a tile floor, Euclid ’s first thirty-two geometric propositions, and was thus given a copy of Euclid's Elements.