The priests, his companions, were not inclined to be indulgent to any weakness shown by their young and admired rival; the husbands of some of his fair parishioners looked on him with an evil eye, while the ladies themselves could see nothing to blame in his deportment, ever devoted and amiable as he was to them.

All the learned men of the country sought his society; all the well-meaning and generous spirits of the neighbourhood found answering virtues in Urbain Grandier, and he was not aware that he had an enemy in existence.
He had forgotten that he had once been so unfortunate as to offend a man who never forgave, and who, from being merely the prior of Coussay, had risen to a high rank in the church, and was now all-powerful, and able to take revenge for any petty injury long past, but carefully treasured, to be repaid with interest when occasion should serve.[3] [Footnote 3: A wretched and pointless satire had appeared under the title of _La Cordonniere de Loudun_, in which the Cardinal figured: Pere Joseph insinuated that Grandier was the author, and the supposed insult was readily credited.] The Cardinal de Richelieu, from the height of his grandeur, suddenly condescended to remember his old acquaintance, the cure Grandier, and was only on the look-out for a moment at which to prove to him that nothing of what had once passed between them had escaped his recollection.

A means was soon presented, and, without himself appearing too prominently in the affair, the cardinal arrived at his desired end.
It happened that some young and giddy pupils of the Convent of Ursulines, bent on a frolic, resolved to terrify the bigoted and ignorant nuns of the community, by personating ghosts and goblins, and they succeeded to their utmost wishes, having acted their parts to admiration; but they were far from dreaming of the fatal consequences of their success.
The disturbed nuns, worried and frightened from their propriety, went in a body to a certain cure, named Mignon, one of the most spiteful and envious of Grandier's rivals, and related to him the fact of their convent being disturbed by ghostly visitants, who left them no peace or rest.

The thought instantly occurred to Mignon, that he might turn this accident to account at the expense of the handsome young priest whom he detested.
Instead of ghosts and spirits, he changed the mystery into witchcraft and _possession by the devil_, and contrived so artfully, that he induced many of the nuns to imagine themselves a prey to the evil one, and to assume all the appearance of suffering from the influence of some occult power.

His pupils became quite expert in tricks of demoniacal possession, falling into convulsions and trances, and going through all the absurdities occasionally practised at the present day, by the disciples of Mesmer.