Père Joseph took the matter into his own hands, and settled it by a _coup d’état_, secret and sudden. After a private consultation with the King in Council, he wrote to the Pope; and Paul V., convinced by his arguments, commanded Madame d’Orléans, under pain of excommunication, to accept her office immediately with all the duties it involved, and to assume the government of the Order, with the certainty of succeeding her aunt as Abbess of Fontevrault. The command fell on Madame d’Orléans like a thunder-bolt, but she could only obey. The consequence was what Père Joseph had desired and foreseen. The new ruler, once forced to rule, advanced “à pas de géant” in the appointed way. In one short week Fontevrault was reformed; every one of the nuns accepting the inevitable, all giving up their worldly indulgences, and returning to the old strict regulation of work and prayer. This happy state of things went on for two years, and Père Joseph, seeing his reformation well at work, was occupied with his other duties as a director of souls--especially of that of the Duchesse de Montpensier, living retired at Champigny and mourning both her husband and her father, the Capuchin Duc de Joyeuse, who did not long survive his son-in-law--when Madame d’Orléans played him the same trick he had played her. She wrote secretly to the Pope, imploring him to have compassion on her trouble of mind, explaining how seriously her “tumultuous occupations” interfered with her personal sanctification, and praying him to withdraw his command that she should succeed Madame de Bourbon and to allow her, on her aunt’s death, to return to her beloved Feuillantines of Toulouse. She begged His Holiness to inquire into the matter through commissaries of his own, without consulting Père Joseph. The Pope did as she wished, and she received full liberty to go where she pleased. Then she sent for Père Joseph and told him all, on condition that nothing should be said to Madame de Bourbon. The old Abbess was to die in peace, imagining that her Coadjutrix would succeed her. Père Joseph needed all his prudence and self-control, says his biographer, to hide his vexation at being thus “joué par une Princesse.” But the thing was done, and he made the best of it, secretly hoping that, “women being naturally inconstant,” the joy of supreme authority might yet induce Madame d’Orléans to change her mind. On March 26, 1611, at the age of seventy-eight, Madame Eléonore de Bourbon died. To all appearance, her Coadjutrix was ready to accept the succession. She even seemed to listen with favour to the persuasions of Père Joseph, who pointed out in glowing terms her duty to the Order. It was near the end of Lent, and Madame d’Orléans held her peace until after the Festival of Easter. On Low Sunday, having assembled the Community, she announced to them that she was about to write to the King and the Queen Regent, praying them to nominate an abbess in her stead.