It was also unfortunate for Urbain that his character, far from winning
pardon for his genius, augmented the hatred which the latter inspired.
Urbain, who in his intercourse with his friends was cordial and
agreeable, was sarcastic, cold, and haughty to his enemies. When he had
once resolved on a course, he pursued it unflinchingly; he jealously
exacted all the honour due to the rank at which he had arrived, defending
it as though it were a conquest; he also insisted on enforcing all his
legal rights, and he resented the opposition and angry words of casual
opponents with a harshness which 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