of following up his project of aggression against the
Protestants, and proposed to him that he should join the army with
Monsieur his brother, leaving Marie de Medicis in the capital; for which
advice many designing and unworthy motives were attributed to him by his
enemies. As an immediate consequence such an arrangement must naturally
have tended to increase the dependence of the young sovereign upon
himself, while the late accident of the Queen having removed all
prospect of a new heir to the throne, should the chances of war prove
fatal to the King and the Due d'Anjou, the crown of France became the
legitimate right of Conde himself. What tended to strengthen the belief
that the Prince actually contemplated such a result, was the fact that
it had been predicted to him by an astrologer that at the age of four
and thirty he would be King of France; and the superstition so common at
the time caused considerable faith to be placed in the prophecy, not
only by himself but by many of his friends. Conde had now attained to
within a year of the stated period; and as a few months previously Louis
had been seriously indisposed, while the Duc d'Anjou had barely escaped
with life from an illness which he had not yet thoroughly conquered, not
a doubt was entertained by the party opposed to him that his great
anxiety to see himself at the head of an army arose from his conviction
that in such a position he should be the more readily enabled to enforce
his pretensions.[72]

Be his motives what they might, however, the ministers, who were anxious
that Louis should absent himself from the capital before he fell under
the dominion of a new favourite who might thwart their own views,
zealously seconded the advice of M. de Conde; and although Marie de
Medicis strenuously opposed the renewal of civil warfare, and the Duc de
Lesdiguieres represented to the King the ardent desire of the
Protestants to conclude a peace, all their efforts were impotent to
counteract the pernicious counsels of the Prince, which were destined
to darken and desecrate all the after-reign of Louis XIII. Marie then
endeavoured to dissuade the King from heading his troops in person; or,
should he persist in this design, at least to forego that of leaving her
in the capital, and of exposing Monsieur to the dangers of the campaign.
All that she could obtain was a promise that the Duc d'Anjou should
remain in Paris, while as Louis had named no precise period for his o