lder, 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