Cardinal Barberini was surprised and somewhat annoyed when he received this letter. He was already a little displeased with Henrietta, and the simple arguments which she used had not the influence which she imagined over the mind of the Protector of England. Moreover, the method of her request was unfortunate. The Cardinal thought it strange that she should have written on her own responsibility, without consulting either the accredited agent of the Papacy, who was at her side, or her own confessor. At first he was almost inclined to consider the letter a forgery, but he dismissed this idea in favour of the supposition that the Queen had been persuaded to this action by some person who sought perhaps to deceive her. He seems to have suspected that Richelieu had some hand in the matter,[243] and he remarked significantly in writing to Rosetti that the Queen's letter had been carried to Paris "by one Forster," an English Catholic believed to be in the pay of the French Government, who, he doubted not, had given his employers an opportunity of reading it. Henrietta meanwhile was awaiting in great anxiety the reply of Barberini, which, when it came at last, was a disappointment. Again it was intimated that only the conversion of the King of England would loosen the purse-strings of the Pope and justify the Holy Father in breaking in on the treasure of the Church stored up in the Castle of S. Angelo. The promise of toleration for the Catholics which would, it seems, have been given,[244] was not enough, for, as the Cardinal justly remarked to Rosetti, that promise had already been made in the secret articles of the Queen's marriage treaty. Moreover, what security could be offered that toleration, even if granted, would be permanent in the face of Parliamentary opposition? Barberini, however, did not wish to be unkind, and he hoped to soften the hard refusal by instructing Rosetti to tell the Queen of England that if matters came to the worst he would be willing to help her to the extent of 15,000 crowns.[245] But neither this promise nor the many pleasing words which accompanied it availed to save Henrietta from bitter disappointment, only less bitter, perhaps, than that which she would have felt had she received the money for which she asked, and had attempted therewith to bribe John Pym.