This advice was eagerly accepted by Marie, whose ambition had at length been aroused by a consideration of the failing health and advanced age of the King and the prospect afforded by the extreme youth of the Dauphin of a protracted minority, and she consequently hastened to express to Henry her earnest desire to feel herself in reality Queen of France before his departure from the kingdom, in order that she might not have to apprehend any neglect of her legitimate authority upon the part of the ministers whom he had selected to share with her the burthen of state affairs. The monarch, who had hitherto refused to listen to every suggestion which had been made to him of the propriety of showing this mark of consideration to his royal consort, was even less inclined to make the concession at this particular moment, when the expenses of his meditated campaign had been estimated at twelve hundred and fifty livres a month for the support of his own troops and an equal sum for those of his allies;[418] and he replied with considerable warmth that she had chosen her time for such a request most injudiciously, since she must be aware that he had neither the time nor the funds necessary to the indulgence of so puerile a vanity. The Queen, however, urged by her advisers, resolutely returned to the charge, declaring that she could assume no prominent position in the temporary government of the kingdom while her own remained so vague and undefined. She reminded him, moreover, of the uncomplaining patience with which she had awaited his pleasure upon this particular; a patience which, as she asserted, she could still have exercised had he not been about to cross the frontier, but which, under existing circumstances, she now considered as weak and pusillanimous in the mother of three princes.[419] "At length, however," says Bassompierre, whose own more than questionable morality did not permit him to enact the censor upon his sovereign, "as he was the best husband in the world, he finished by giving his consent, and delayed his departure until she should have made her public entry into the capital." [420] On retiring to his closet the King declared to one or two of his confidential friends, as he had already done on former occasions when the same question had been mooted, that the actual cause of the repugnance which he felt to accede to the wishes of the Queen arose from a firm conviction that her coronation would cost him his life, and that he should never leave Paris in safety, as his enemies could only hope to triumph by depriving him of existence.[421]