At Les Roches, it seems, began the famous and lifelong friendship between Armand de Richelieu and François Le Clerc, Marquis du Tremblay, now a man of two-and-thirty, thin, red-haired, deeply marked with the small-pox, who had already made his name as Père Joseph, a Capuchin monk of extraordinary talent and energy. The future _Éminence grise_ was Angevin by birth, had been a soldier, but at twenty-two had thrown himself passionately into “religion.” Before Richelieu came to Luçon, Père Joseph was carrying on a valiant conflict of eloquence, persuasion and violence combined, with the Protestants throughout these western quarters, many of whom were considerable by descent and actual power. Père Joseph was attracted by difficulty. Whatever the truth about his after life may be--history tells contrary tales--there is no doubt that at this time he was an ardent reformer in his own sense of the word and a man of deep personal religion. It was owing to him, and to his friend the Abbess of Fontevrault, Eléonore de Bourbon, aunt of Henry IV., that a Capuchin convent was established at Saumur in the teeth of the Protestant governor, Du Plessis-Mornay. From this convent and others, notably Fontenay, in the diocese of Luçon, Lent preachers were sent out into all parts. Richelieu welcomed them with “extreme joy.” But it was not till a year or two later, after King Henry’s death, when his views and hopes were fast extending beyond diocesan limits, that he and Père Joseph found themselves working together in the difficult and complicated affairs of the Abbey of Fontevrault. CHAPTER III 1610-1611 “Instructions et Maximes”--The death of Henry IV.--The difficult road to favour--Père Joseph and the Abbey of Fontevrault. If some of those who were privileged to watch, with short-sighted eyes, Richelieu’s apostolic work in the diocese of Luçon, could have read his thoughts and sometimes looked over his shoulder, they might have been somewhat startled. Probably his contemporaries knew nothing of certain rapidly scrawled sheets in the Cardinal’s familiar writing, which were discovered by M. Armand Baschet among the old manuscripts of the Bibliothèque Nationale, about thirty years ago. The sheets are headed, “Instructions et Maximes que je me suis donné pour me conduire à la Cour.” At first the date was a little disputed; but internal evidence seems to show that Richelieu wrote these pages of notes in the winter of 1609, or early in 1610, when at the background of his thoughts, apparently all busy with evangelising Bas-Poitou, the desire for public life and power was waxing stronger every day. It was not likely indeed that such a young race-horse, keen, nervous, swift and delicate in body and brain, would long be contented to plough the heavy wastes of the muddiest diocese in France.