at the crowd consisted almost entirely of women.

Meanwhile the object of all this commotion arrived at length at the porch
of the church of Saint-Pierre. Ascending the steps, he knelt at the top
and prayed in a low voice, then rising he touched the church doors with
his laurel branch, and they opened wide as if by magic, revealing the
choir decorated and illuminated as if for one of the four great feasts of
the year, and with all its scholars, choir boys, singers, beadles, and
vergers in their places. Glancing around, he for whom they were waiting
came up the nave, passed through the choir, knelt for a second time at
the foot of the altar, upon which he laid the branch of laurel, then
putting on a robe as white as snow and passing the stole around his neck,
he began the celebration of the mass before a congregation composed of
all those who had followed him. At the end of the mass a Te Deum was
sung.

He who had just rendered thanks to God for his own victory with all the
solemn ceremonial usually reserved for the triumphs of kings was the
priest Urbain Grandier. Two days before, he had been acquitted, in
virtue of a decision pronounced by M. d'Escoubleau de Sourdis, Archbishop
of Bordeaux, of an accusation brought against him of which he had been
declared guilty by a magistrate, and in punishment of which he had been
condemned to fast on bread and water every Friday for three months, and
forbidden to exercise his priestly functions in the diocese of Poitiers
for five years and in the town of Loudun for ever.

These are the circumstances under which the sentence had been passed and
the judgment reversed.

Urbain Grandier was born at Rovere, a village near Sable, a little town
of Bas-Maine. Having studied the sciences with his father Pierre and his
uncle Claude Grandier, who were learned astrologers and alchemists, he
entered, at the age of twelve, the Jesuit college at Bordeaux, having
already received the ordinary education of a young man. The professors
soon found that besides his considerable attainments he had great natural
gifts for languages and oratory; they therefore made of him a thorough
classical scholar, and in order to develop his oratorical talent
encouraged him to practise preaching. They soon grew very fond of a
pupil who was likely to bring them so much credit, and as soon as he was
old enough to take holy orders they gave him the cure of souls in the
parish of Saint-Pierre in Loudun, which w