Childhood passed, and the first awakening to serious things was given to Marguerite about the time of the battle of Moncontour (1569). She was then sixteen. The Duc d’Anjou, afterwards Henri III., aged eighteen, handsome, brave, and giving promise of a virtue and a prudence he never justified, took his sister aside one day in one of the alleys of the park at Plessis-lez-Tours to tell her of his desire, on starting for the army, to leave her as his confidant and support with their mother, Catherine de’ Medici, during his absence at the wars. He made her a long speech, which she reports in full with some complacency:-- “Sister, the nourishment we have taken together obliges us, not less than proximity, to love each other.... Until now we have naturally been guided to this without design and without the said union being of any utility beyond the pleasure we have had in conversing together. That was good for our childhood; but now it is time to no longer live like children.” He then points out to her the great and noble duties to which God calls him, in which the queen, their mother, brought him up, and which King Charles IX., their brother, lays upon him. He fears that this king, courageous as he is, may not always be satisfied with hunting, but will become ambitious to put himself at the head of the armies, the command of which has been hitherto left to him. It is this that he wishes to prevent. “In this apprehension,” he continues, “thinking of some means of remedy, I believe that it is necessary to leave some very faithful person behind me who will maintain my side with the queen, my mother. I know no one as suitable as you, whom I regard as a second myself. You have all the qualities that can be desired,--intelligence, judgment, and fidelity.” The Duc d’Anjou then proposes to his sister to change her manner of life, to be assiduous towards the queen, their mother, at all hours, at her _lever_, in her cabinet during the day, at her _coucher_, and so act that she be treated henceforth, not as a child, but as a person who represents him during his absence. “This language,” she remarks, “was very new to me, having lived until then without purpose, thinking of nothing but dancing and hunting; and without much interest even in dressing and in appearing beautiful, not having yet reached the age of such ambitions.” The fear she always felt for the queen, her mother, and the respectful silence she maintained in her presence, held her back still further. “I came very near,” she says, “replying to him as Moses did to God in the vision of the bush: ‘Who am I? Send, I pray thee, by him whom thou shouldest send.’” Nevertheless, she felt within her at her brother’s words a new courage, and powers hitherto unknown to her, and she soon consented to all, entering zealously into her brother’s design. From that moment she felt herself “transformed.”