hey 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.

CHAPTER III

Hardly had tranquillity been restored when Mignon, Duthibaut, Menuau,
Meunier, and Barot, having lost their cause before the Archbishop of
Bordeaux, and finding themselves threatened by Grandier with a
prosecution for libel and forgery, met together to consult as to the best
means of defending themselves before the unbending severity of this man,
who would, they felt, destroy them if they did not destroy him.

The result of this consultation was that very shortly afterwards queer
reports began to fly about; it was whispered that the ghosts whom the
pious director had expelled had again invaded the convent, under an
invisible and impalpable form, and that several of the nuns had given, by
their words a