When, moreover, he exchanged, as we have seen, in the autumn of 1524, the monastic cowl for the garb of a professor; and when he and the prior Brisger were the only ones of all the former monks left in the convent, he remained quietly where he was, and never entertained the idea of marriage. A noble lady, Argula von Staufen, wife of the Ritter von Grumbach, formerly in the Bavarian army, who had written publicly for the cause of the gospel, and thereby incurred, with her husband, the displeasure of the Duke of Bavaria, and who was now in active correspondence with the Wittenbergers and Spalatin, expressed to the latter her surprise that Luther did not marry. Luther thereupon wrote to Spalatin on November 30, 1524, saying, 'I am not surprised that folks gossip thus about me, as they gossip about many other things. But please thank the lady in my name, and tell her that I am in the hands of the Lord, as a creature whose heart He can change and re-change, destroy or revive, at any hour or moment; but as my heart has hitherto been, and is now, it will never come to pass that I shall take a wife. Not that I am insensible to my I flesh or sex, ... but because my mind is averse to wedlock, because I daily expect the death and the well-merited punishment of a heretic.' Shortly afterwards Luther wrote to his friend Link: 'Suddenly, and while I was occupied with far other thoughts, the Lord has plunged me into marriage.' It was in the spring of 1525 that he had formed this resolve, which speedily ripened to its fulfilment. In a letter of March 12, 1525, he complained to his friend Amsdorf, who had gone to Magdeburg, of depression of spirits and temptation, and besought him to pay him a friendly visit to cheer him. It was, as we see from the contents of the letter, a temptation, which caused Luther to feel that, in the words of Scripture, it was 'not good for man to be alone,' but that he ought to have a help-meet to be with him. As to the choice of such a help-meet he may have already talked with Amsdorf, and very possibly they may have spoken of a lady of Magdeburg of the family of Alemann, who were conspicuous there for their devotion to the evangelical cause.