Of the various functions the priest is called upon to perform, none requires such delicacy of treatment as the ministry of the tribunal of Penitence.[5] It becomes still more delicate where the consciences of nuns are concerned. But the burden is intolerable, and few could bear it, if extraordinary agencies are employed to increase the difficulty. The anxiety of a newly-appointed confessor in such a situation would be easily understood by Grandier, and would tend to console him for his failure in obtaining the coveted position. However this may be, extraordinary symptoms began to declare themselves within the convent, but they were hushed up as far as possible, and not allowed to be known outside the walls. To do otherwise would have been to give the new institution a severe blow, and to risk ruining it at its birth. This the nuns and their confessor understood. It was therefore decided to work in the greatest secrecy, and to cure, or at least mitigate, the evil. It was hoped that God, touched by the patience with which the chastisement was borne, would Himself, in His mercy, send a remedy. This was all that prudence could devise, but _human_ prudence, always infinitely limited in its views; _Divine_ prudence is quite another thing. God had resolved that the mystery of iniquity should no longer lie buried. As the church, at its birth, gained great credit through similar events,[6] so again, in this case, did they serve to revive the faith of true believers, and so it will be again in future times. Loudun was fated to behold events of this nature, and they were to produce their ordinary effect, viz., to enlighten those whose consciences, though distorted, had preserved some remnants of original good, and to blind souls darkened with pride, and hearts full of perversity. As usually happens, the extraordinary phenonomena displayed in the persons of the nuns were taken for the effects of sexual disease. But soon suspicions arose that they proceeded from supernatural causes; and at last they perceived what God intended every one to see. Thus the nuns, after having employed the physicians of the body, apothecaries and medical men, were obliged to have recourse to the physicians of the soul, and to call in both lay and clerical doctors, their confessor no longer being equal to the immensity of the labour. For they were seventeen in number; and everyone was found to be either fully possessed, or partially under the influence of the Evil One.