the people rise against the King, Louis XVI. Peace will succeed the
anarchy when Napoleon comes to power. Pius VII., to flatter the Emperor,
will interpolate the ritual on the 15th of August with a new saint,
the fête of St. Napoleon,[236] who was martyred under Diocletian. The
Emperor’s interference will hurt the Church greatly, and foreign armies
(1814-1815) will reduce Paris to extremities she has never before
undergone.
As to the fête of St. Napoleon, the story runs that when it was first
instituted its impropriety, if not blasphemy, was much discussed in
Catholic circles. An Irish priest from Rome was one day communicating
the strange fact at a dinner-table in Dublin, when an Irish gentleman
exclaimed with vehemence, “What d—d impudence!” “No, no!” said the
priest, “what you mean to call it is the Blessed Assumption,” for that
day falls on the 15th of August.
_Century I.—Quatrain 31._ [I. 170.]
Tant[237] d’ans en Gaule les guerres dureront,
Outre[238] la course du Castulon[239] monarque:
Victoire incerte[240] trois grands couronneront,
Aigle, Coq-lune, Lyon-soleil en marque.
_Translation._
War draws her length in Gaul for many a day,
Beyond the course of Castula the Queen;
Uncertain victory will crown three thrones,
The Eagle, Cock-moon, Lion-sun, on coin.
Civil war and foreign will last in France long after the ephemeral
Republic has perished. Victory, always uncertain, will crown three
houses in succession. They will coin money with the Imperial eagle of
Napoleon; the revolutionary Gallic cock appearing with the house of
Orleans, instituted by revolution, and adding the crescent of Mahomet for
successes in Algeria; whilst the Lion represents Louis XVIII. and Charles
X. of the Capetian Monarchy, with the sun representing Catholicism. Le
Pelletier says the _Sun_ symbolises Christianity, and the moon Mahomet
or Antichrist. Myself I think it would be best to consider the _sun_ as
the symbol of Christ; the _moon_ as the symbol of atheistic democracy or
Antichrist.
This Garencières thought to be interpretable in his time. He reads the
second line,
“Outre la course du Castulon monarque,”
as, after the death of the King of Spain a Castilian monarch. The eagle
as Charles V. [a further analogy with Napoleon], Henry II., contemporary
with Nostradamus, and Soliman, which three crowns met under Leo with
uncertain odds in war.
The quatrain that follows this is:
_Century I.—Quatrain 32._
Le grand Empire sera tost translaté,
En lieu petit qui bientost viendra croistre,
Lieu bien infime d’exigue comté,
Où au milieu viendra poser son sceptre.
_Translation._
The great Empire will soon be translated into a little place
that quickly will expand. An unworthy spot, a mere county, from
the midst of which he will come to lay aside his sceptre.
Garencières interprets this of Charles V., who, three years before his
death, resigned Spain and the Low Countries to Philip II., his son,
and the empire to his brother Ferdinand. He then shut himself up in the
Escurial, in Castile, a monastery; which the son afterwards enlarged
into a grand palace, accounted by Spaniards as the eighth wonder of the
world. But I am not aware that any one has yet pointed out that it fits
Napoleon as patly just as it can Charles. His empire was cramped into
Elba—Æthalia, the soot island (_lieu bien infime_); a mere countship was
his monarchy there. It soon grew again into an empire, but he only came
out of its midst to resign his sceptre a second time and for ever.
After these prelusory flourishes relating to the Vulgar Advent and French
Revolution, we are now to enter upon a more special theme; the murder of
the King, and the ragged beggars’ festival and brawl, called the First
Republic of the Sans Culottes.
LOUIS XVI.
We enter now upon the lamentable period comprised in the reign of Louis
XVI.—a period whose only parallel in history is the false and illegal
trial of Charles I. of England; the perfectibility of man being evinced
only by the increased savagery and augmented moral turpitude exhibited at
the later period. The first quatrain that has been adduced as pertaining
to this period in the Centuries of Nostradamus is that of:
_Century I.—Quatrain 57._ [I. 173.]
Par[241] grand discord la terre[242] tremblera,
Accord rompu dressant la teste au ciel,
Bouche sanglante dans le sang nagera,
Au sol la face ointe de laict et miel.
_Translation._
By reason of great discord the earth shall quake.
Revolt destroys the old order and lifts its head to heaven.
The [King’s] mouth will swim in its own blood,
And his front, anointed with milk and honey, roll upon the sod.
Tremblement de terre is earthquake, and from the time of Virgil, and much
earlier than that, has been always taken to forebode convulsions of the
State; disturbance of all things rooted and firm, and typifying upheavals
of the populace. That it is the King’s mouth shall swim in blood is
shown unmistakably by the fourth line that follows, where the face is
said to be anointed with the milk and honey of the holy ampulla. The
Kings of France were crowned at Reims with the oil that was kept there
in _la sainte ampoule_ for this purpose. The milk and honey is merely a
figurative expression; oil and wine, milk and honey, equally represent
the fatness of the land.
Upon this quatrain, about the meaning of which he manifestly could know
nothing, Garencières naïvely says: “The words and sense are plain, and
I cannot believe there is any great mystery hidden under these words.”
Words put a slight upon men’s minds to think they understand what they
see written; from this it is clear that you may understand the words, and
yet comprehend nothing from understanding them. Orators please take note.
_Century III.—Quatrain 59._ [Bouys, 55.]
Barbare empire par le tiers usurpé.
La plus grand part de son sang mettra à mort.
Par mort sénile par lui le quart frappé;
De peur que sang par le sang ne soit mort.
_Translation._
The rude empire is usurped by the third estate (tiers état).
It will put to death the greatest part of his [the Royal] family.
A quarter [of the kingdom] is struck with senile death;
For fear of retribution of death, from children of those murdered.
This must relate to 1789, as in no country but in France had the third
estate usurped exclusive power to itself. Since that period the House of
Commons in England has pursued the same lines, in a more covert, gradual,
and, as some would say, lawful manner. In the Lyons edition, 1558, the
second line reads _mettra à mort_, which makes better sense, though
it spoils the rhythm, unless the _a_ in _mettra_ may suffer elision
in old French prosody—a question I lack knowledge to determine. The
quarter being destroyed, as old age withers a man, is to be understood
analogically of the lives of citizens removed by terror, or emigration,
or spoilation of property, or revolutionary taxation, or by imprisonment.
Bouys tells us that _sang_ is to be understood in Nostradamus of
children, family, relatives, so that _que sang par le sang_ here would
mean, lest the families of the injured should rise against the assassins
of their flesh and blood. Such a reaction actually took place in the
South, in spite of all the truculent precautions taken. The quatrains
exhibit no kind of method or chronological order in their arrangement. So
that, out of the thousand and more that exist of them, the commentator
must hunt at large until he comes upon something salient that enables
him to attach the passage to some event, when often he will be led to
the most extraordinary results. The usurpation by the _tiers état_
here, with all but the very phrase supplied, and with the results that
would follow from the usurpation so unmistakably set forth, fixes the
pertinency of the quatrain almost as perfectly as if it had been headed
_French Revolution_. Yet a reader of less observance and care than is
requisite to stay the attention which leads to discovery, might readily
pass it over as jargon and mere nonsense. But, once you have deciphered
the quaint phrases and their connection, you cannot doubt the meaning,
nor the author’s vivid gift of expression in conveying ideas, with
a terseness more than Tacitean, if less artistic. You discover that
Nostradamus can hint in a phrase of three words what would require a
long paragraph to make it explicit in an ordinary way. This is truly the
language of prophecy. It becomes legible in the light of the event it
prefigures, as characters written in milk upon paper become visible at
the fire, or when placed in the hot light of the sun.
_Century I.—Quatrain 36._ [_Bouys, 56._]
Tard le monarque se viendra repentir,
De n’avoir mis à mort son adversaire;
Mais viendra bien à plus haut consentir,
(à ce) Que tout son sang par mort fera défaire.
_Translation._
The monarch shall too late repent
That he hath not put to death his adversary;
But he will have to permit later on,
That all his family shall suffer for it by death.
Taking this to be the meaning, it is clear that the adversary is the Duke
of Orleans,—that centre of all plotting and intrigue against Louis,—who
had so forgotten himself as, at a public bed of justice, in 1788, to
shake his fist in the King’s face with a most threatening expression
of countenance. For this he was only sent into exile when he ought to
have suffered death. In the last line _sang_ again stands for family
and relatives. This could scarcely be plainer if the names were given;
but, had Nostradamus here deviated from the secret idiom of prophetic
language, he would have prevented the accomplishment of what he was
asserting. Things like this may be happened on by chance, if you choose
to say so, but the theory reels under the constant repetition of such
chances. Men whose names are prominently before the world can hardly be
introduced into prophecy. But we shall see shortly that Nostradamus is
able to assign names with precision where the individuals are of a lesser
rank, and that their names may so pass unobserved until history has
recorded them with her iron pen.
_Century IX.—Quatrain 20. (June 20, 1791.)_ [I. 174.]
De nuict viendra par le forest de Reines,
Deux pars, vaultorte, Herne la pierre blanche,
Le moyne noir en gris dedans Varennes:
Esleu Cap. cause tempeste, feu, sang, tranche.
_Translation._ [II. P., I. 174.]
By night shall come through the forest of Reines
Two parts, face about, the Queen a white stone,
The black monk in gray within Varennes.
Chosen Cap. causes tempest, fire, blood, slice.
In the translation of this, Garencières leaves the two words _vaultorte
Herne_ as in the original French, and does not attempt the translation.
He also mistakes Reines for Rennes, the chief town in Little Brittany.
He evidently has no conception whatever of the meaning of the quatrain.
Bouys and Le Pelletier differ on minor points in rendering these words.
_Forest_, Le Pelletier reads, in Latin, as _fores_, gate, that is, by
the Queen’s gate, and he quotes Thiers to show (“Hist. Révol. Fran.” i.
309) that the Queen made sure of a secret gate out of the Tuileries, by
which they escaped. But Bouys takes it for the forest of Reines, which is
on the road to Varennes. _Deux pars_ is husband and wife; _voltorte_, or
_vaultorte_, is a cross-road, or a divergent road; _vaulx_, a valley, and
_torte_, tortuous, says Le Pelletier. One does not quite see how to educe
cross road from this. Roquefort gives _volt_ for face, and _torte_ would
be turned, which seems to me more likely. However, it stands for the road
through St. Menehould, on the way to Montmédi. This, it seems, they were
forced into by posting arrangements. Prudhomme (“Revol. de Paris,” No.
102, p. 542) sets the divergence down to vacillation or change of orders.
If that be the correct statement, then my etymology of _face about_ for
_vaultorte_ fits it best. _Herne_ is _Reine_, by metaplasm of _h_ for
_i_. It was permissible in anagrammatic writing to change one letter
in a word, but not more than one. The reader can refer for this to the
“Dictionnaire de Trévoux,” under _Anagramme_. The white stone stands
for this royal or precious stone, the Queen, who was dressed in white.
The King was dressed in grey. Prudhomme, in the work mentioned above
(p. 554), says he wore a round hat, which hid his face, and had on an
iron-grey coat (_gris de fer_), so he appeared like a Carmelite.
There are nearly fourteen octavo pages of small print (p. 411) of De
Bouillé, which it might be well to print, called “Détails du voyage du
roi et de la reine à Montmédy et leur arrestation à Varennes dans le
Clairmontais, le 22 juin, 1791,” full of interesting particulars.
VAULTORTE.
“Mais on verra que les circonstances changèrent entièrement
jusqu’au moment de l’exécution de son projet; et ce qui était
possible au mois de janvier 1791, ne l’était plus au mois de
juin.”—“Mémoires du Marquis de Bouillé,” p. 195, ed. 1821.
“Il [le roi] m’informait qu’il partirait, avec sa famille, dans
une seule voiture qu’il ferait faire exprès. Dans la réponse
que je fis au roi, je pris la liberté de lui représenter
encore une fois que la route par Varennes offrait de grands
inconvéniens, à cause des relais qu’il fallait y placer pour
suppléer à la poste.... J’engageai donc Sa Majesté à prendre la
route par Reims, ou celle de Flandre, en passant par Chimay, et
en traversant ensuite les Ardennes pour se rendre à Montmédy.
Je lui représentait les inconveniens de voyager avec la reine
et ses enfants, dans une seule voiture _faite exprès_, et qui
serait remarquée de tout le monde,” etc.—“Mémoires du Marquis
de Bouillé,” p. 217.
This flight occurred on June 20, 1791. On the following day the National
Assembly suspended Louis XVI. from his functions. On the 1st of September
they passed another decree, that should the King surrender to the will of
the people and become a Constitutional King he might do so. This he duly
signed and attested on the 14th of the same month; so _Capet fut esleu_.
The title of King of the French, instead of the King of France, had been
established since October 16, 1789 (“Cyclopædia of Universal History”),
which virtually was the same thing. But yet strictly it was not until
after the flight that he became _Esleu Cap_. Madame Campan, in the
“Mémoires de Marie-Antoinette,” ii. 150, relates that the Queen’s hair
had become white in a single night and she had had a lock of her white
hair mounted in a ring for the Princesse de Lamballe, inscribed _Blanchis
par le malheur_. She had become _la pierre plus blanche encore_. Her
dress was white, and her complexion too. The _tranche_ stands for the
slice, or _couperet_, of the guillotine. Bouys was amongst the first to
explain this quatrain in print, and he says he owed the explanation to M.
de Vaudreuil, of Nevers, who has written upon Nostradamus.
_Century IX.—Quatrain 34._ [I. 177.]
Le part[243] solus,[244] mary[245] sera mitré
Retour: conflict passera sur le thuille,
Par cinq cents: un trahyr[246] sera[247] tittré[248]
Narbon: et Saulce par coutaux avons d’huille.
_Translation._
The husband alone afflicted will be mitred on his return. A
conflict will take place at the Tuileries by five hundred men.
One traitor will be titled—Narbon; and (the other) Saulce,
grandfather oilman, will [hand him] over to the soldiery.
The harness broke at Montmirail, and detained them two hours (p.
247). The King showed himself at Chalons, and was recognized by the
postmaster, who held his tongue. Everything went wrong owing to the
change of date and loss of time on the road. At St. Menehould he was
recognized again, and Drouet the postmaster’s son, rode on to Varennes to
betray him.
On the 15th of June the Marquis de Bouillé received a letter from the
King, saying his departure would be delayed till the 20th, at midnight;
that he could not take the Marquis d’Agoult, recommended to him by
Bouillé (as an “homme d’esprit, ferme et courageux, qui peut se montrer
si les circonstances l’exigaient,” p. 217), because Madame de Tourzel,
the governess of the children, insisted on her right of place never to
quit them; and this consideration carried the decision. As if the King
could not have let them follow in another vehicle! Anything rather than
be forced to show himself on the road as he did (p. 256).
How it all miscarried will be best understood by reading the whole of
De Bouillé’s account. His arrangements seem to have been masterly, like
the noble soldier and statesman that he was; the King’s arrangements
vacillating, foolish, and even perverse. In this account Monsieur Saulce
is not seen at all.
This is to be filled in as follows. Louis XVI. alone, without his wife,
will suffer the disgrace of being crowned with the red cap of Liberty,
called the Phrygian bonnet or mitre, from its being the head-dress of
the priests of Mithras. The five hundred Marseillais led the attack upon
the Tuileries, a palace begun by Catherine de Medici (1564) on the site
of the tile-kilns (_le thuille_), and not in existence when Nostradamus
wrote this (1555). The Count de Narbonne, Minister of War, was of the
noblesse, and Saulce, father, son, and grandson, were chandlers and
grocers, or oilmen, of Varennes. The father was _Procureur-syndic_ of his
commune. These oilmen betrayed him to the populace, and he was arrested
_per custodes_. These sneaks stand as typical or representative traitors
of the two classes of _noblesse_ and _bourgoisie_ paying cowardly court
to the _prolétaire_ class.
The Madame Campan before alluded to (ii. 158) relates that their
Majesties alighted at the grocery shop of the Mayor of Varennes, Saulce;
and he could have saved the King. The Queen was seated in the shop
between two high-piled stacks of candles, and was talking to Madame
Saulce.
The _Gazette Nationale_, June 25, 1791, reporting what took place in the
Assembly the night before, announces that M. Martinet, in addressing the
House, described Saulce’s conduct as wise and _heroic_, replying as he
did to the promises and caresses of the King and Queen, “J’aime mon roi;
mais je resterai fidèle à ma patrie.” The result of his heroism was that
two months later on the Assembly voted him twenty thousand livres as the
reward of his exalted _vertue citoyenne_. Whether, in the scramble that
so soon followed, he ever received the wasteful and ridiculous Judas-gift
there is nothing to show; but the bulletin recording the vote of these
new-fledged statesmen, liberal of money not their own, still exists. We
have here “_un Brute Français_,” apeing the Roman, who loved Cæsar well,
but blood better.
Thiers’ account of the attack upon the Tuileries, June 20, 1792 (“Révol.
Fran.,” ii. 152), furnishes a pathetic picture of the afflicted King
(_marri mitré_) of the red nightcap, in which he was day-dreaming. The
palace was evacuated at about seven in the evening by the populace,
which had effected its entry by main force; but, when the crowd had now
withdrawn peaceably and in good order, the King, Queen, his sister, and
the children, all met together, shedding a torrent of tears. The King
seemed stunned by what had taken place; the red cap was still upon his
head; he now, for the first time for several hours, noticed it, and flung
it aside with indignation.
As to the five hundred men named by our oracle, the historian of the
French Revolution again comes to our aid (ii. p. 209), saying that
Barbaroux had promised the Jacobins the co-operation of his Marseillais,
who were on the way to Paris. The project was to assemble at the
Tuileries and depose the king (ii. p. 235). They arrived on June 30,
1792, and were five hundred men. Ils étaient _cinq cents_.
Those who care to see how Narbonne acted against the King, can refer
to the “Histoire de la Révolution,” by Bertrand de Molleville, for
satisfaction.
This stands out certainly as one of the most startling of all the
thousand quatrains of our strange seer. It will henceforth and to the
end of time speak for itself without comment, if we merely enumerate the
historic facts as here anticipated in four lines. The horror of the king
at finding himself _mitré_. The god Mithras is depicted on coins in this
very cap, and his priests made it their head-dress; further, it furnishes
the lively etymology of the word _mitre_ itself. It was for ages, before
the French took it up, the received emblem of that frantic crime that has
been called _Liberty_. I will not say the result of this is, as poetry,
artistically beautiful; but, as a phrase of intense expression, it is so
terse that at a stroke, beyond that of hydraulic power, it seems able
to compress a truss of hay so as it may lie in a husk of beech-mast. I
do say, nevertheless, that, thus regarded, Dante and Shakespeare can
hardly furnish between them three sentences of such compressed force;
the matter in it seems to be condensed to adamant. _Mari sera mitré_,
as it has been just explained, will be found, the more profoundly it is
thought upon, to be an original miracle in phraseology. It is an actual
and an awful prophecy in itself, but to devise a phrase to so convey the
idea by human speech to the human mind of another is miraculous. It may
sleep for centuries, as this has done, for lack of interpretation; but,
when duly interpreted it cannot be resisted; it storms the understanding;
and, as a phrase, seems to be a miracle begotten expressly to become
the vehicle in which to convey another miracle. This horror of the King
mitred is one distinct forecast. The second point is his return to Paris.
There is, thirdly, the conflict of the five hundred. Fourthly, the
spot, the Tuileries,—at Nostradamus’ time, a thing of thin air, where
the tiles were still baking, fire-hot to roof houses with, whilst the
pen was writing this. Here again, if it is not poetry, it performs the
poet’s function, which gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a
name. Fifthly, comes a titled name—Narbonne. Sixthly, that of Saulce; and
finally, the handing over to the custodians. Here are seven distinct
prophecies of events historical: two of them, names of men yet to be born
at a period two hundred years removed. And, behold, these seven facts are
put before you in four lines!
There is a point of particular interest to be noted in that first line.
Bouys (p. 62) remarks that, first line though it be, it should be the
last, as the mitre was the closing act of the entire drama; and he
supposes that Nostradamus wanted to make the treachery most prominent to
the mind of the reader. That is to talk like a chronologer. The first
cause and the final are, in spiritual matters, one. The life and death
of man are reduced to two points, and epitaphs give enough about most of
the lives of mortal men when they chronicle the birth and death dates.
“Alone he returned and was mitred.” How, step by step, it all came about,
_follows_ necessarily; and that is how Nostradamus puts it to us. If
he had weighted himself with what science calls method, he would have
destroyed his own instinct; as science does, just as Saturn ate up the
offspring of his proper loins. The soul that does this must grope to its
results, but can never jump to them by prophecy.
Before we go to the next quatrain it may be instructive to note
Garencières’ treatment of the pregnant forecast we have just traversed.
He translates thus:
“The separated husband shall wear a mitre,
Returning, battle, he shall go over the tyle,
By five hundred one dignified shall be betrayed,
Narbon and Salces shall have oil by the quintal.”
“The verse signifieth, that some certain man who was married shall be
parted from his wife, and shall attain to some great ecclesiastical
dignity. The second verse is that, coming back from some place or
enterprise, he shall be met and fought with, and compelled to escape over
the tiles of a house. The third verse is that a man of great account
shall be betrayed by five hundred of his men. And the last that, when
these things shall come to pass, Narbon and Salces, which are two cities
of Languedoc, shall reap and make a great deal of oil.”