Her love of dress had been as great as might have been expected of a woman of her beauty, her rank, and, above all, her nationality. Once in her early married life she expressed great pleasure in a magnificent gown studded with jewels which she was wearing. Her confessor, the stern Bérulle, who was present, reproved her somewhat sharply for her vanity and frivolity. "Ah, mon père, do not be angry with me," pleaded the young Queen, half laughing and half penitent. "I am young now, but when I am forty I will change all this, and become quite good and serious." Her light words were prophetic, for she was in her fortieth year when she became a widow. Contemporary prints show of what fashion was her widow's dress. It was of some black stuff made quite plainly, except that the bodice was shaped to a point in front, and it was almost high at the neck; the only relief was a white linen collar, falling down over the shoulders, and matching the cuffs, which turned back over the wide sleeves. From the head fell a long, heavy black veil. This sorrowful garb was the outward expression of a grief which, like most deep grief, craved the consolation of quiet and retirement. And where, in the Paris of that day, could quiet be found, except within the protecting walls of a religious house? Henrietta, since her return to Paris in 1644, had frequented the Carmelite convent which her childhood loved, and in her first sorrow she would gladly have forsaken the world altogether, and remained there among the nuns;[402] but her duties were incompatible with this step. Her young sons required her help to restore their shattered fortunes, and, above all, her youngest daughter needed a mother's care; after her husband's death her worldly occupations increased rather than diminished, and it was these occupations which cost her the loss of her calm retreat among the Carmelite nuns. The daughters of S. Teresa are vowed to an austere separation from all things worldly, and their rule could not brook the constant coming and going, the noise and the disturbance which waited upon a Queen who was also a politician. They were obliged to request the Queen of England to forgo her visits, and she, however sorrowfully, recognized the justice of their desire and withdrew, to seek another retirement more suited to the conditions of her case. A hasty glance at a map of seventeenth-century Paris will show the great number of religious houses which then existed, and it might be surmised that to make a choice among them would be no easy matter; but Henrietta's circumstances were peculiar, and she had little difficulty in selecting the one most fitted to them. [Illustration: HENRIETTA MARIA FROM AN ENGRAVING]