Urbain Granadier was not satisfied with the arrogant demonstration by
which he signalised his return, which even his friends had felt to be
ill advised; instead of allowing the hate he had aroused to die away or
at least to fall asleep by letting the past be past, he continued with
more zeal than ever his proceedings against Duthibaut, and succeeded in
obtaining a decree from the Parliament of La Tournelle, by which
Duthibaut was summoned before it, and obliged to listen bareheaded to a
reprimand, to offer apologies, and to pay damages and costs.
Having thus got the better of one enemy, Urbain turned on the others,
and showed himself more indefatigable in the pursuit of justice than
they had been in the pursuit of vengeance. The decision of the
archbishop had given him a right to a sum of money for compensation, and
interest thereon, as well as to the restitution of the revenues of his
livings, and there being some demur made, he announced publicly that he
intended to exact this reparation to the uttermost farthing, and set
about collecting all the evidence which was necessary for the success of
a new lawsuit for libel and forgery which he intended to begin. It was
in vain that his friends assured him that the vindication of his
innocence had been complete and brilliant, it was in vain that they
tried to convince him of the danger of driving the vanquished to
despair, Urbain replied that he was ready to endure all the persecutions
which his enemies might succeed in inflicting on him, but as long as he
felt that he had right upon his side he was incapable of drawing back.
Grandier's adversaries soon became conscious of the storm which was
gathering above their heads, and feeling that the struggle between
themselves and this man would be one of life or death, Mignon, Barot,
Meunier, Duthibaut, and Menuau met Trinquant at the village of
Pindadane, in a house belonging to the latter, in order to consult about
the dangers which threatened them. Mignon had, however, already begun to
weave the threads of a new intrigue, which he explained in full to the
others; they lent a favourable ear, and his plan was adopted. We shall
see it unfold itself by degrees, for it is the basis of our narrative.
We have already said that Mignon was the director of the convent of
Ursulines at Loudun: Now the Ursuline order was quite modern, for the
historic controversies to which the slightest mention of the martyrdom
of St. Ursula and her eleven thousand virgins gave rise, had long
hindered the foundation of an order in the saint's honour. However, in
1560 Madame Angele de Bresse established such an order in Italy, with
the same rules as the Augustinian order. This gained the approbation of
Pope Gregory XIII in 1572. In 1614, Madeleine Lhuillier, with the
approval of Pope Paul V, introduced this order into France, by founding
a convent at Paris, whence it rapidly spread over the whole kingdom,
so-that in 1626, only six years before the time when the events just
related took place, a sisterhood was founded in the little town of
Loudun.
Although this community at first consisted entirely of ladies of good
family, daughters of nobles, officers, judges, and the better class of
citizens, and numbered amongst its founders Jeanne de Belfield, daughter
of the late Marquis of Cose, and relative of M. de Laubardemont,
Mademoiselle de Fazili, cousin of the cardinal-duke, two ladies of the
house of Barbenis de Nogaret, Madame de Lamothe, daughter of the Marquis
Lamothe-Barace of Anjou, and Madame d'Escoubleau de Sourdis, of the same
family as the Archbishop of Bordeaux, yet as these nuns had almost all
entered the convent because of their want of fortune, the community
found itself at the time of its establishment richer in blood than in
money, and was obliged instead of building to purchase a private house.
The owner of this house was a certain Moussaut du Frene, whose brother
was a priest. This brother, therefore, naturally became the first
director of these godly women. Less than a year after his appointment he
died, and the directorship became vacant.
The Ursulines had bought the house in which they lived much below its
normal value, for it was regarded as a haunted house by all the town.
The landlord had rightly thought that there was no better way of getting
rid of the ghosts than to confront them with a religious sisterhood, the
members of which, passing their days in fasting and prayer, would be
hardly likely to have their nights disturbed by bad spirits; and in
truth, during the year which they had already passed in the house, no
ghost had ever put in an appearance--a fact which had greatly increased
the reputation of the nuns for sanctity.
When their director died, it so happened that the boarders took
advantage of the occasion to indulge in some diversion at the expense of
the older nuns, who were held in general detestation by the youth of the
establishment on account of the rigour with which they enforced the
rules of the order. Their plan was to raise once more those spirits
which had been, as everyone supposed, permanently relegated to outer
darkness. So noises began to be heard on the roof of the house, which
resolved themselves into cries and groans; then growing bolder, the
spirits entered the attics and garrets, announcing their presence by
clanking of chains; at last they became so familiar that they invaded
the dormitories, where they dragged the sheets off the sisters and
abstracted their clothes.
Great was the terror in the convent, and great the talk in the town, so
that the mother superior called her wisest, nuns around her and asked
them what, in their opinion, would be the best course to take in the
delicate circumstances in which they found themselves. Without a
dissentient voice, the conclusion arrived at was, that the late director
should be immediately replaced by a man still holier than he, if such a
man could be found, and whether because he possessed a reputation for
sanctity, or for some other reason, their choice fell on Urbain
Grandier. When the offer of the post was brought to him, he answered
that he was already responsible for two important charges, and that he
therefore had not enough time to watch over the snow-white flock which
they wished to entrust to him, as a good shepherd should, and he
recommended the lady superior to seek out another more worthy and less
occupied than himself.
This answer, as may be supposed, wounded the self-esteem of the sisters:
they next turned their eyes towards Mignon, priest and canon of the
collegiate church of Sainte-Croix, and he, although he felt deeply hurt
that they had not thought first of him, accepted the position eagerly;
but the recollection that Grandier had been preferred before himself
kept awake in, him one of those bitter hatreds which time, instead of
soothing, intensifies. From the foregoing narrative the reader can see
to what this hate led.
As soon as the new director was appointed, the mother superior confided
to him the kind of foes which he would be expected to vanquish. Instead
of comforting her by the assurance that no ghosts existing, it could not
be ghosts who ran riot in the house, Mignon saw that by pretending to
lay these phantoms he could acquire the reputation for holiness he so
much desired. So he answered that the Holy Scriptures recognised the
existence of ghosts by relating how the witch of Endor had made the
shade of Samuel appear to Saul. He went on to say that the ritual of the
Church possessed means of driving away all evil spirits, no matter how
persistent they were, provided that he who undertook the task were pure
in thought and deed, and that he hoped soon, by the help of God, to rid
the convent of its nocturnal visitants, whereupon as a preparation for
their expulsion he ordered a three days' fast, to be followed by a
general confession.
It does not require any great cleverness to understand how easily Mignon
arrived at the truth by questioning the young penitents as they came
before him. The boarders who had played at being ghosts confessed their
folly, saying that they had been helped by a young novice of sixteen
years of age, named Marie Aubin. She acknowledged that this was true; it
was she who used to get up in the middle of the night, and open the
dormitory door, which her more timid room-mates locked most carefully
from within every night, before going to bed--a fact which greatly
increased their terror when, despite their precautions, the ghosts still
got in. Under pretext of not exposing them to the anger of the superior,
whose suspicions would be sure to be awakened if the apparitions were to
disappear immediately after the general confession, Mignon directed them
to renew their nightly frolics from time to time, but at longer and
longer intervals. He then sought an interview with the superior, and
assured her that he had found the minds of all those under her charge so
chaste and pure that he felt sure through his earnest prayers he would
soon clear the convent of the spirits which now pervaded it.
Everything happened as the director had foretold, and the reputation for
sanctity of the holy man, who by watching and praying had delivered the
worthy Ursulines from their ghostly assailants, increased enormously in
the town of Loudun.