Meanwhile the Prince de Conde continued to urge upon the King the expediency 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 own departure it was believed that he would not leave the city before the termination of the Easter festival, and that meanwhile circumstances might occur to induce him to change his resolution.  But while Marie de Medicis indulged in this hope, the same anticipation had produced a different effect upon the minds of Conde and his party, who secretly urged upon the King that longer delay could only tend to afford facilities to the Protestants for strengthening