ch made them his lifelong enemies.

The first example which Urbain gave of this inflexibility was in 1620,
when he gained a lawsuit against a priest named Meunier. He caused the
sentence to be carried out with such rigour that he awoke an
inextinguishable hatred in Meunier's mind, which ever after burst forth
on the slightest provocation.

A second lawsuit, which he likewise gained; was one which he undertook
against the chapter of Sainte-Croix with regard to a house, his claim to
which the chapter, disputed. Here again he displayed the same
determination to exact his strict legal rights to the last iota, and
unfortunately Mignon, the attorney of the unsuccessful chapter, was a
revengeful, vindictive, and ambitious man; too commonplace ever to arrive
at a high position, and yet too much above his surroundings to be content
with the secondary position which he occupied. This man, who was a canon
of the collegiate church of Sainte-Croix and director of the Ursuline
convent, will have an important part to play in the following narrative.
Being as hypocritical as Urbain was straightforward, his ambition was to
gain wherever his name was known a reputation for exalted piety; he
therefore affected in his life the asceticism of an anchorite and the
self-denial of a saint. As he had much experience in ecclesiastical
lawsuits, he looked on the chapter's loss of this one, of which he had in
some sort guaranteed the success, as a personal humiliation, so that when
Urbain gave himself airs of triumph and exacted the last letter of his
bond, as in the case of Meunier, he turned Mignon into an enemy who was
not only more relentless but more dangerous than the former.

In the meantime, and in consequence of this lawsuit, a certain Barot, an
uncle of Mignon and his partner as well, got up a dispute with Urbain,
but as he was a man below mediocrity, Urbain required in order to crush
him only to let fall from the height of his superiority a few of those
disdainful words which brand as deeply as a red-hot iron. This man,
though totally wanting in parts, was very rich, and having no children
was always surrounded by a horde of relatives, every one of whom was
absorbed in the attempt to make himself so agreeable that his name would
appear in Barot's will. This being so, the mocking words which were
rained down on Barot spattered not only himself but also all those who
had sided with him in the quarrel, and thus added considerably to t