The strict performance of his duty proved to be the ruin of Aubriot. Among the worst nuisances of the capital were the scholars of the University of Paris; they were addicted, among other things, to drunkenness, libertinism, and robbery, and their insolence was still more insufferable than their vices. Perpetual quarrels and contests, in which they were almost always the aggressors, took place between these votaries of learning and the citizens. The main cause of their excesses being thus pushed beyond all bounds was the complete impunity which they enjoyed. Fonder of its privileges than of morality and justice, the University on all occasions strenuously resisted the efforts of the magistrates to bring scholars to punishment. In more than one instance it threw its protecting shield over plunderers and assassins, and pursued with a deadly hatred those individuals who had dared to enforce the laws against criminals. This crying abuse Aubriot determined to suppress. In the prison of the Little Châtelet, which was built by him, he ordered two strong and not over comfortable cells to be constructed, for the reception of delinquent scholars. These he called his _clos Bruneau_ and _rue de Fouaire_; the University schools being situated in places which were so named. By this stinging joke, and by the vigorous measures of Aubriot, the University was inexpiably offended. Regardless of its anger, he, however, resolutely persisted in arresting and committing to prison every student who ventured to transgress. While Charles the fifth lived, Aubriot remained safe; but the death of his patron, and the weakness and confusion of a minority, laid him open to the malice of his enemies. The University had sworn to accomplish his ruin, and this oath it held sacred. In his public character he had so deported himself as to be intangible; and, therefore, his private life was ransacked to find matter for accusation. It was discovered, or feigned, that he was too warm a lover of women, and, to give a darker colour to this fault, it was added, that he had an especial predilection for Jewesses. From this, by a curious process of logic, it was deduced as an inference, that he was himself a Jew and a heretic; his accusers not perceiving, or not choosing to perceive, that the one of these conditions excluded the other. Their reasoning was akin to that which, in the fable, the wolf uses to the lamb. Unluckily, too, for the Provost, they resembled the wolf in other points; they had his savageness and his ability to injure. The University and the clergy joined in a clamour against him, and were supported by the duke of Berry, who was hostile to the Burgundian party, to which Aubriot belonged.