The first act of the Duchess, after her conversion, was to implore pardon of her husband. M. de Longueville behaved generously, and went to meet her at Moulins, and took her back with him to Rouen with every mark of delicacy and distinction. Reverting to the aspirations of her youth, Madame de Longueville placed herself in active communication with the good Carmelites, whom she had never entirely forgotten. She was constantly writing to Mademoiselle du Vigean, the _sous-prieure_, for guidance in her new way of life; for she had need of spiritual advice, and cried out for help, and help came through the good offices of the Marquise de Sable, who had herself withdrawn from the world to Port-Royal, and supplied the want felt by her illustrious friend by placing her in the hands of one of the great spiritual guides of that day, M. Singlin. Between the ghostly adviser and the fair penitent there ensued frequent conversations curiously flavoured with a spice of romance. Persecution had already attacked Port-Royal, and M. Singlin, in order not to be recognised, went to the Hotel de Longueville disguised as a doctor, his features being concealed by an ample wig. M. Singlin strove to fix limits to the ardour by which Madame de Longueville was carried away, he counselled her to remain in the outer world, to which her husband and children bound her, and in which her salvation, he said, might be as surely accomplished by exacting more vigilance than it would be found necessary to exercise in the retirement of the cloister. Madame de Longueville's piety had been generally subordinated to the vicissitudes of a very agitated existence. Her primitive tendency to devotion was rekindled on every occasion that she experienced a trouble, a disenchantment, or any failure of courage. In 1651, when she had been somewhat compromised by the homage of the Duke de Nemours, she had retired to the Carmelite convent at Bourges; then towards the end of her sojourn in Guienne she had sought refuge among the Benedictines at Bordeaux. But all these gleams of repentance vanished so soon as some caprice of fortune came to reawaken, by the hope of fresh success, her natural inclination for political intrigue and pleasure. On accompanying her husband to Normandy she appeared wholly resolved not to allow herself to be engrossed by anything save her eternal welfare. However, it appears that her desire to abstain henceforward from all political intrigue was looked upon incredulously for several years; since, in 1659, at the time of the Treaty of the Pyrenees being signed, Mazarin, replying to Don Louis de Haro, who required that the French Minister should restore Conde "to all his birthrights," still placed, as we have noticed, Madame de Longueville among the feminine trio, who, said he, "would be capable of governing or of overturning three great kingdoms." Yet Mazarin yielded, and Conde returned to France.