Madame Antoinette d’Orléans retired to Lencloître, a half-ruined convent of the Order near Poitiers, and was there joined by many nuns from all parts of France, and even from Fontevrault itself, who desired to lead a stricter life under her guidance. It was not long before she founded, with the help and approval of Père Joseph and the Bishops of Luçon and Poitiers, a congregation known as _Les Filles du Calvaire_, independent of Fontevrault, the object of which was the practice of the Rule of St. Benedict in all its austere purity. Pushed constantly to the front by Père Joseph, and with no unwillingness on his own part, the Bishop of Luçon added much to his reputation by his conduct of these affairs; State affairs, they might almost be called, considering the rank of those concerned and the wealth and political importance of the great Order of Fontevrault. CHAPTER IV 1611-1615 Waiting for an opportunity--Political unrest--The States-General of 1614--The Bishop of Luçon speaks. Richelieu worked hard in his diocese for the next three years, struggling all the while with ill-health and impatience. He went to Paris once during this time and offered his services to the powerful Concini, who received him graciously; but nothing more came of it. And the Queen was for the present inaccessible. Another disappointment was his failure to be elected as representative of his ecclesiastical province, Bordeaux, at a convocation of the clergy which was held in Paris in the early days of the Regency. On this occasion the Archbishop of Bordeaux, Cardinal de Sourdis--nicknamed _Sordido_--showed himself an enemy to the aspiring young man. But no envious Metropolitan could keep Richelieu long in the background. He was becoming a very popular figure in the west country, of which Poitou and its learned capital were the centre. His private life appears to have been blameless. He kept up an affectionate intercourse with his own family. For his mother he was still “mon malade,” from childhood a sickly, brilliant creature, a subject of uneasiness and pride. His sister, Madame du Pont-de-Courlay, turned to him for sympathy in a money loss or the death of a little child. He never lost sight of his brother Alphonse, the Carthusian, whose refusal had made him a bishop, and whom, in later years of power, he dragged from his cloister to be Archbishop and Cardinal.