ZADKJEL may have been deceived by
the stars; but the reputation of Nostradamus, who charmed the leisure hours of
Catherine de Medici in her chateau of
Chaumont, remains intact, if we are to believe his recent commentators, the abbé Thornd - Chavigny and M. Guillaudin.
These gentlemen have recently been squabbling over the correct rendering of portions of the “Centuries “ of the astrologer who left on record, contained in nine hundred and forty-six quatrains, all the remarkable events which were and which are to succeed each other between the years 1559 and 1999. The abbé, who has been a student of Nostradamus, has this advantage over his rival, that he can present certificates. In 1858 he published a work on the “Centuries,” showing that Napoleon III would strike his flag and fly to London; and he saw MacMahon between the empress and the republic. So great was his faith in the astrologer that he refused to believe the rumor of the marshal’s death in 187o. He immediately wrote: “If dead and buried, he will rise again; for he is the English chief, the English prince spoken of by the prophet, who is to sojourn too long and to have under his orders the princes of the blood and the marshals of France,” etc. In 1870 the abbé, always by the light of the “Centuries,” was able to announce the death of Victor Emmanuel, who would be followed to the grave by Pius IX.; that Leo XIII. would succeed Pius IX. in the lifetime of Henri V.; and that Muscovy would diminish Turkey and attempt to throw her back into Asia. The abbé declares that the Archbishop of Rheims and the Bishop of La Rochelle both heard him say at Paris in 1867, ~ j5ro~os to the quatrains on the Universal Exhibition, “The Krupp cannon will take Paris.” Having (as he says) announced a thousand extraordinary facts, the abbe Thorné-Chavigny declares that he has acquired a greater authority than other commentators of the great prophet. What with the abb6 and M. Guillaudin, we have a series of very remarkable interpretations, making every allowance for the ambiguous style in which prophecies are usually uttered. Not to go further back than the close of the last century and the commencement of the great Revolution, the commentators show us that Nostradamus saw in the heavens the whole of that tragedy, and predicted many of its more minute details. The fate of Louis XV I., for example. is foretold in a remarkable manner, the following quatrain alluding to the arrest of his Majesty and the royal family at Varennes : — Le part solus mary sera mitré Retour, conflict passera sur la thuille Par cinq cens un trahyr sera tiltré~, Narhon et Saulce par quarteaux avons d’huille. The first line, being interpreted, means that the king alone shall wear the red cap. The second line and half the third foretell the attack on the Tuileries of the 10th of August by five hundred Marseillais, and the rest of the quatrain the betrayal of the king by the Comte de Narbonne and by Sauce, the grocer, of Varennes, who, received twenty thousand francs from the Convention for hindering the evasion of Louis XVI. Prophesying the fate of Marat, Nostradamus alludes to the “angel of assassination “as Za C~or;ieille, which is curious, considering that Charlotte Corday was the grand-niece of Corneille. He also writes of the blood-stained statue : tyrant murdered and people praying. And no sooner was Marat slain than statues and altars were erected to his honor all through France and people invoked the “blessed heart of Marat.”
Nostradamus, too, predicted the inventions of Montgolfler (Montgaulfier, as he
wrote the name), and the employment of a
balloon at the battle of Fleurus; and in
the same quatrain the plunder of the pope
between “two rocks,” Rome and Avignon. In the sixtieth quatrain the advent of Napoleon I. is thus foretold: — Un empereur naistra près d’Italie, Qui à l’Ernpire sera vendu bien cher. Diront avec quels gens it se ratie Qu’on trouvera moms prince que boucher. The prophet also read in the future the success of Bonaparte at Toulon, from which place he would drive a people that would afterwards be hurtful to him, and that his tyranny would last fourteen years. It lasted fourteen years five months and four days. From a simple soldier, Napoleon, born near Italy, and more of a butcher than a prince, was to become emperor, to be valiant in arms, and to vex the Church.