The most of these good widows spent a part of their life in convent chapels, and it was in this direction that a breach was made in their spirit of economy, for, according to pious authors, the devil worms his way through the vestry door. They would meet there a lay brother, charged with the duty of nurturing simple souls into fruitfulness. Beginning by sending some delicious tarts in exchange for a _De Profundis_, the ladies would by degrees make up their minds to found a chapel, then to have it decorated, then to endow it. Or they received charming letters from the good nuns: “We are poor women whom your departure has left in distress, and we may say that we have lost all the good of life.... We are still wearing the cloaks you made for us, and we are going without pelisses, as our custom is. The convent has not changed since you left us ... except it be that we suffer cruelly from cold during the winter.”[118] Many grave and strong-minded widows, after having mingled in affairs, took advantage of their widowhood only to forget a world in which their heart had not found sustenance. So soon as they had fulfilled unavoidable duties, it was a pleasure to them to distribute their property and retire from the world. We can hardly realise how the vision of a few sweet, peaceful years consecrated to the soul haunted the hearts of women whom the evil star of too high birth had flung into political affairs. Such was the end Margaret of Austria[119] would have desired. Such was actually the end of two exquisite princesses of the house of Lorraine: Margaret of Lorraine, duchess of Alençon, who first connected herself with a hospital, then with the strict order of the Poor Clares; and Philippa of Gueldres, who entered the same sisterhood when her son ascended the throne. She lived with them for twenty-seven years in the deepest humility, styling herself “a worm of the soil,” though her companions might continue to call her “our reverend Mother the Queen.”