The ground was prepared with admirable effect. By a spirited concert between Jesuit magistrates and plotting ladies, a system of deterring had been set on foot. No pleader would ruin himself by defending a girl thus heavily aspersed. No one would digest the poisonous things stored up by her jailers, for him who should daily show his face in their parlour to await an interview with Cadière. The defence in that case would devolve on M. Chaudon, syndic of the Aix bar. He did not decline so hard a duty. And yet he was so uneasy as to desire a settlement, which the Jesuits refused. Thereupon he showed what he really was, a man of unswerving honesty, of amazing courage. He exposed, with the learning of a lawyer, the monstrous character of the whole proceeding. So doing, he would for ever embroil himself with the Parliament no less than the Jesuits. He brought into sharp outline the spiritual incest of the confessor, though he modestly refrained from specifying how far he had carried his profligacy. He also withheld himself from speaking of Girard’s girls, the loose-lived devotees, as a matter well-known, but to which no one would have liked to bear witness. In short, he gave Girard the best case he could by assailing him _as a wizard_. People laughed, made fun of the advocate. He undertook to prove the existence of demons by a series of sacred texts, beginning with the Gospels. This made them laugh the louder. The case had been cleverly disfigured by the turning of an honest Carmelite into Cadière’s lover, and the weaver of a whole chain of libels against Girard and the Jesuits. Thenceforth the crowd of idlers, of giddy worldlings, scoffers and philosophers alike, made merry with either side, being thoroughly impartial as between Carmelite and Jesuit, and exceedingly rejoiced to see this battle of monk with monk. Those who were presently to be called _Voltairites_, were even better inclined towards the polished Jesuits, those men of the world, than towards any of the old mendicant orders. So the matter became more and more tangled. Jokes kept raining down, but raining mostly on the victim. They called it a love-intrigue. They saw in it nothing but food for fun. There was not a scholar nor a clerk who did not turn a ditty on Girard and his pupil, who did not hash up anew the old provincial jokes about Madeline in the Gauffridi affair, her six thousand imps, their dread of a flogging, and the wonderful chastening-process whereby Cadière’s devils were put to flight.