Con's dispatches are written in much the same strain as those of Panzani. They tell of kindness, of religious sympathy, of even greater royal favour, of the King's evident sympathy with Catholicism--how on one occasion he said, "I, too, am a Catholic," how on another his talk with the Queen on religious subjects was such that it would hardly be credited at Rome; of the success which attended the distribution among the ladies of the Court of the pretty religious trifles such as rosaries and pictures, which the care of Cardinal Barberini had sent over; of the Queen's delight in a cross sent to her by the Pope--how she always wore it, and how she said that it was the most precious thing she possessed; of the favour shown to Father Sancta Clara at Court, and by Windbank--how it had even been proposed that he should preach a sermon in the Queen's chapel about the anniversary of the Powder Plot, "to exculpate the Catholics from treason against Princes"; how even the Jesuits acknowledged that never since the days of the negotiation for the Spanish match had the Catholics enjoyed such peace. Nevertheless, Con was too sagacious not to be able to read in some measure the signs of the times. "God only knows how long this calm will last," he wrote.[176] It was unfortunate that a person who seemed so admirably fitted for his post should have been obliged to relinquish his task half done. But the rigours of the northern climate told so severely on a constitution long accustomed to the suns of Italy that in 1639 Con was obliged to think of turning his steps southward, for not even the distinguished attentions he received in his sickness from the King, the Queen, and the nobility availed to cure him. He reached Rome, but he only recrossed the Alps to die before he could place on his head the Cardinal's hat, which had been so much striven for. On his death-bed he thought of Henrietta, and begged Cardinal Barberini, who was by his side, to send her a little picture of the Virgin as a recognition of his gratitude for her kindness, and as a memorial of their friendship. But already the shadows of the Civil War were beginning to close about the Queen. The bright hopes which had marked the days of Con's sojourn in England were becoming haunting fears, which, in their turn, were to give place to feelings as like despair as such natures as Henrietta's can know.