{523}
_Johnny Crapaud_ (Vol. v., p. 439.).--When the French took the city of Aras
from the Spaniards, under Louis XIV., after a long and a most desperate
siege, it was remembered that Nostradamus had said:
"Les anciens crapauds prendront Sara.
The ancient toads shall Sara take."
This line was then applied to that event in this very roundabout manner.
Sara is Aras backward. By the ancient toads were meant the French: as that
nation formerly had for its armorial bearings three of those odious
reptiles, instead of the three flowers de luce which it now bears.
(Seward's _Anecdotes_, vol. i. p. 78.) Nostradamus died in 1566.