Laravel 4.2 PDO persistent connection

database.php

<?php

return array(

    /* other settings removed for brevity */
    'connections' => array(


        'mysql' => array(
            'driver'    => 'mysql',
            'host'      => 'localhost',
            'database'  => 'database',
            'username'  => 'root',
            'password'  => '',
            'charset'   => 'utf8',
            'collation' => 'utf8_unicode_ci',
            'prefix'    => '',
            'options'   => array(
                PDO::ATTR_PERSISTENT => true,
            ),
        ),
        /* other connections removed for brevity */
    )
)