But in this case the Cardinal had reckoned without his host. Louise was only a young girl, but she had a spirit capable even of resisting Richelieu. "She had more courage than all the men of the Court,"[406] wrote Madame de Motteville. She refused to pass on the secrets of the King, or to play in any way into the hands of his minister, whose jealous anger was aroused and who determined to part her from her royal friend. It is not surprising that in these circumstances the girl's mind should have reverted to her old wishes for a conventual life, but there was another reason, which, long after, in the safe retreat of Chaillot, she confessed to her friend Madame de Motteville. Louis was a virtuous man, but he was an unloved and unloving husband, and she was young and beautiful. There were signs that the Platonic friendship was ripening into something stronger and warmer. Louise became alarmed. That which to many women was an honour, to her pure and upright soul was disgrace unspeakable, and she determined to fly to the only refuge which the times and the circumstances permitted her, and to bury her sorrows and her temptations within the walls of the cloister. It was hard to persuade the King to part with her, but she had a powerful ally. Richelieu sent for the royal confessor, Father Caussin, the Jesuit, and in the bland tones which he knew so well how to use, he gravely discussed with him the moral dangers of such a friendship as that which existed between Louis and his wife's maid of honour. Not, he hastened to add, that he believed that any harm was done, but such things were always dangerous. The Cardinal thought that he was exactly adapting his remarks to his audience; but Caussin, who hated and distrusted him, was too acute to be taken in, and had events gone no farther Louise de la Fayette might have remained in the world for Father Caussin. But the girl herself, who had better reason than any one to know the truth of Richelieu's words, and whose own heart was beginning to betray her, sought the Jesuit's advice. At first he was a little rough with her. He did not believe that a girl of seventeen, luxuriously brought up and petted like "a bird of the Indies," could really desire to embrace the austerities and abnegations of a conventual life. He hinted that she was piqued by the refusal of the King to grant her some request, or that her self-love had been wounded in one of the little contretemps of Court life. Louise answered gently and quietly. Nothing had occurred to distress or alarm her in any way. The King's kindness was unchanged, and so great that at any time he would enable her to make a splendid marriage; but she had only one desire, and that was to leave the world. Caussin then pointed out to her the hardness of the cloister for a girl brought up as she had been, but her answer again was ready. She was not thinking of a stern Order, for which she knew her health