ian 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.