Regarding this as a sign of divine will, he obediently applied himself assiduously for eight days toward developing his ideas, producing in this time a fairly full account of the geometry of the cycloid curve and solving some problems that subsequently, when issued as challenge problems, baffled other mathematicians. His famous Provincial Letter and his Pensees, which are read today as models of early French literature, were written toward the close of his brief life. He died in Paris in 1662 at the age of 39.