The Queen had recovered her spirits. Not only had Mazarin, in spite of his official refusals, sent her secretly a sum of money sufficient to raise her ever-ready hopes, but she expected great things from a growing friendship with Emery, the Deputy Treasurer and one of the richest men in France. To complete her satisfaction the clergy showed great sympathy with her, and sent her, on their first assembling, a sum of money as an earnest of more to come[321]; which money was immediately laid out in raising levies for England. The assembly of the French clergy, which was presided over by the Cardinal-Archbishop of Lyons, the brother of the great Richelieu, met in May, 1645, but it was not until the February of the following year that the case of the Queen of England was seriously considered. Henrietta's advocate on this occasion was probably the best that could have been chosen. The Bishop of Angoulême during his sojourn in England had resisted in a really praiseworthy manner those foreign influences which had corrupted some of his fellow-countrymen who resided there, and he was perhaps regarded in Paris with greater favour than any other of the Queen's servants. He was, moreover, a speaker and preacher of repute, and the oration which he delivered before the Fathers of the Church was not only a fine piece of oratory, but was skilfully constructed to work as much as possible upon the feelings of his audience.[322] He dwelt upon the miserable condition of the Catholic Church in England, which, before these troubles, had begun, after a century of persecution, to raise its head under the protection of the Queen. He asserted (what was true) that were the King forced to make terms with his foes, the Catholics would be the scapegoat. He drew lurid word-pictures of the terrible consequences to the Church throughout Europe should the impious rebels succeed in their object of setting up a Puritan republic in England. Then he turned to the even more powerful argument of self-interest. The Huguenots, he said, who were beaten down but not destroyed, were looking across the Channel to the Puritans of England, whose real design was the destruction of the Catholic Church as well in France as in their own land. To help forward this project of the Evil One large sums of money were being dispatched by the French Protestants to aid the armies of rebellion in England.[323] "Res tua tunc agitur, paries cum proximus ardet,"