merely set it down to prove to the sceptical, and those who incline to
class Nostradamus authoritatively amongst impostors whose jargon is not
worth the pains of interpreting, that they may look at this and learn
from it two facts: First, that before the event forecast has happened,
all the keys of interpretation are wanting, the prophecy looks like
jargon, and is so for all practical purposes; but that, secondly, once
it has happened, or as we may say kissed sunlight, the keys appear with
it, the light and the understanding awaken together. There is light in
potence or _in posse_ now; but even then they will not unlock secrets,
if the keys remain in the hands of ignorant or scientific persons [or
self-sufficient, which is nearly the same thing as scientific], or in
the hands of romance-readers and lazy dullards. You will not unravel
“the words of the wise and their dark sayings” by reading a quatrain
once through. The interpreter must approach the work in a simple,
unprejudiced manner; he must get light from history how he can,—from
memoirs, letters, books,—and learn by the success and failure of past
commentators. He must be content to work very hard all the while, and
with little encouragement from others; and then at last he may so do
something, that even his neighbours may allow his work to be,—according
to the bent or water-pent of the particular mind of each,—some a
discovery, some a revelation. He himself may probably feel that a supreme
patience has had more to do with bringing the thing to pass than any
other faculty that could easily be named. Things of the spirit must, of
course, be spiritually discerned, and all talk about faculties when the
individual soul is treated of must sound a little paradoxical. To divide
the unique and indivisible unity of the soul into parts and pieces,
betrays in the proposer himself perhaps some “want of parts.” But from
the earliest time until now, this has been the scientific way of treating
the human understanding; so let us consider that it is right enough. The
soul has almost always been cut into three, and then left to wriggle and
wriggle, and at last to join itself together again, as best it can, like
a worm in a garden. If this be according to Aristotle, let all Sorbonne
profess it for right. What does it matter how we treat _one_ thing, if
only our method be perfectly scientific and in accordance with all the
rest of the universal phenomena, and with a right interpretation of
nature? What can it matter about the invisible, if only our eyes know how
to take account of the things that are seen; that is, of the only things
truly subject to the cognizance of man?
_Century IX.—Quatrain 92._ [Bouys, 64.]
Le roi voudra en cité neufue entrer.
Par ennemis expugner l’on viendra.
Captif libère faux dire et perpétrer,
Roi dehors estre, loin d’ennemis tiendra.
_Translation._
The King would enter into the city.
(By enemies expelled, France will obtain it [or] they will arrive
there;)
It will be false to say and reiterate that the captive is free,
[And] that the King who is out [of Paris] will keep aloof from
enemies.
M. le Pelletier does not touch this quatrain. M. Bouys gives his
interpretation, which is not very convincing, and I thought of passing
it by altogether. But the _captif libère_ so links it with the journey
to Varennes of the Royal family, that it seemed preferable to include
it, and leave it to the reader to reject or accept it, as he might think
fit. Another determining influence was from my noticing that the _cité
neuve_, or Montmédi, which the King desired to reach, was not French
when the quatrain was penned. The VIII., IX., and X. Centuries were not
published with the first seven, but were issued at Lyons from the same
press, namely that of Pierre Rigaud. Moreri states that Nostradamus felt
encouraged by the reception accorded to the seven Centuries to publish
three more (_i.e._ VIII, IX., and X.), in 1558. There is a copy now
in the Bibliothèque Royale, to which the authorities give the date of
1558. Pierre Rigaud’s name appears on the title, but no date, which is
remarkable, as the first volume of 1555 has this imprint: “_Ce present
livre a été achevé d’imprimer le IIIIᵉ jour de may MDLV_,” giving a
date as if for a nativity. M. le Pelletier demurs to the accuracy of
the pretended date, and thinks it must belong to the edition of 1566,
by Pierre Rigaud. If so, these three Centuries scarcely appeared in
the lifetime of Nostradamus, though they are dedicated to his patron,
Henry II.,—who died in 1559,—in an elaborate and interesting epistle
dedicatory. In opening this, Nostradamus says he has long been in doubt
as to whom he should devote (_consacrer_) these three Centuries, but at
last took courage to lay it at the feet of royalty. Now, the edition of
1566 particularly states that the prophecies _n’ont encore jamais esté
imprimées_. One cannot read the Dedicatory Epistle without feeling sure
it was written for the eye of the King, and therefore at least as early
as 1558, but probably earlier by a year or two. I therefore assume that
he presented them to the King in a fair manuscript, and that having done
that he remained content, and that the family at his death, finding the
original manuscript, put it in Rigaud’s hands to be printed.
My reason for thus inquiring into the dates is this: that the
investigation makes it extremely likely the above quatrain was written
before 1557, the year in which Montmédi was taken by France, and, if so,
it explains the line that I have thrown into a parenthesis in a manner in
which it has never been interpreted before. _Expugner_ is not French now;
_expugnable_ is all that now remains of it in the language. So that
Par ennemis expugner l’on viendra
may, I think, be regarded as a parenthetic explanation referring to the
_cité neuve_, which was not yet French territory, though on the point
of becoming so,—_l’on viendra par ennemies expugner_, by expulsion of
the enemy, in 1557. If this rendering be thought valid, it furnishes
one reason the more for explaining this quatrain as one of the series
belonging to the Revolutionary epoch, and one more redeemed from the maze
of Nostradamus.
It would appear from Bouys, though he does not produce his historical
authorities, that immediately the King escaped, France was flooded
with announcements that the captive was free, and had their consent to
hold himself aloof—_loin d’ennemis tiendra_. If this be established,
it becomes certain that we can in the main determine this quatrain
accurately. (“Histoire de la Révolution, par deux amis de la Liberté,” in
7 vols., vol. vii. p. 126.)
_Century VIII.—Quatrain 87._ [I. 179.]
Mort conspirée viendra en plein effect,
Charge donnée et voyage de mort:
Esleu, créé, receu par siens, deffait.
Sang d’innocent devant soy par[249] remort.
_Translation._
Death hatched by treason will take its full effect,
A charge imposed, voyage made to death.
Elected, created, received by his own, and undone by them.
The blood of Innocency (rises) before them in remorse (eternal).
Bouys thinks by the last line Nostradamus intended to convey, that the
King felt poignant grief at the innocent victims his overthrow would
leave without protection to the tender mercies of the States-General.
The other is better, connecting it, as it does, with that case
analogous, where the mob cursed themselves out of their own mouth, and
said “His blood be upon us, and on our children” (Matt. xxvii. 25).
_Century X.—Quatrain 43._ [I. 180.]
Le trop bon temps,[250] trop de bonté royale,
Fais et deffais, prompt, subit, negligence,
Legier[251] croira faux d’espouse loyalle,
Luy mis à mort par[252] sa benevolence.
_Translation._
Too much of good fortune, a too lax Royalty,
That makes and unmakes [appointments] sudden, hasty, negligent;
Lightly believes his loyal Consort false,
And bids good nature lead the way to death.
This is a picture to the life of the fat-making King Louis Seize. The
brush of a Velasquez, as it cannot paint the moral, could hardly so well
place him before the eye, as in life. He is no picture well-framed,
hanging for inspection in a gallery of pictures, but flesh and blood
like one’s self alive, and moving with us in the gallery a spectator and
observer like ourselves. We have here Louis XVI. before us in the flesh.
“_He makes and unmakes appointments_; yes, indeed.” In a little more than
eighteen years, sixty-seven ministers take office and relinquish it. Here
they are alphabetically, as Bouys enumerates them. Amelot, Barentin,
Bertrand de Molleville, Boyne, Breteuil, Brieune, Brogli, Beaulieu,
Cahier de Gerville, Calonne, Castries, Champion de Cicé, Clavières,
Chambonas, Clugny, Dabancourt, Danton, de Grave, Delessart, de Crosne,
de Joly, d’Ormesson, Dabouchage, Dumourier, Duportail, Duport-Dutertre,
Duranton, Foulon, Fourgueux, Fleurierès, Joly de Flemy, Lacoste, la
Galaisières, Lailliac, la Jarre, la Luzerne, Lamoignon, Lambert,
Laporte, Latour-Dupin, Lenoir, Liancourt, Leroux, Malesherbes, Maurepas,
Miromeuil, Montmorin, Montbarrey, Mourgues, Narbonne, Necker, Pastoret,
Puységur, Roland, Sartines, Ségur, Servan, Saint-Germain, Saint-Priest,
Sainte-Croix, Taboureau, Tarbé, Terrier-Monceil, Thevenard, Turgot,
Vergennes, Villedeuil. Several of these served twice, and Necker was in
three times; so that the number of ministries in the time mentioned is
seventy-two—a thing not to be paralleled in history as a course of doing
and undoing, of _fais and deffais_.
His temper was ungovernable and sudden, extending even to rough bathos,
but was soon over. Maurepas always said, you must let the King have his
first fling of humour out, and then he will soon recover. Secondly, his
negligence let everything drift, finance included, till ruin brought
collapse. You might think his economists had drawn their singular axiom
for statesmanship, _Laissez faire_, from the example of their royal
master. He fell at once into the intrigue of the diamond necklace
belonging to Marie Antoinette, which was conveyed by the Countess of La
Motte to the Cardinal de Rohan. Report runs that he even placed his wife
under arrest in her own chamber for several days. “Lui mis à mort par sa
bénévolence” displays a most wonderful forecast, and it is open to read
it now LOUIS _mis à mort_.
_Century VI.—Quatrain 92._ [I. 182.]
Prince de beauté tant[253] venuste,[254]
Au chef menée, le second faict,[255] trahy.
La cité au glaive de poudre face[256] aduste,[257]
Par trop grand meurtre la chef[258] du Roi hay.
_Translation._
The prince of very comely beauty (shall be)
Led to the head, and then betrayed to a second (place).
The city of the sword, with powder-torch, burns
The head of the King, hated on account of his illegal murder.
The edition 1558 gives the reading as above, but the line does not scan;
it wants two syllables. Bouys, without comment, reads _Prince sera_;
Le Pelletier understands _menée_ as a synonym for _intrigues_. But I
should read it rather as a misprint for _mené_. The city of the sword
is a graphic name for Paris, where the guillotine was first erected on
September 25, 1792, having been perfected by Guillotin, the doctor, whose
name was given to it. Roquefort gives the word _adusté_ as _brûlé_; but
Nostradamus uses it as a verb, _aduster_, in the third person of the
present indicative. Paris burnt the king’s head with a powder-torch, or
burning powder, that is to say with quicklime; and, as having done him
wrong, the people hate him, and wish to obliterate the traces of the
murder perpetrated.
The body and head of the King were placed in a basket of wicker-work, and
carried, according to De Montgaillard (“Histoire de France,” iii. p. 415.
Janvier, 1793[259]) to the cemetery of the Madeleine, and thrown into a
trench twelve feet deep, which had been spread with quicklime; more was
thrown in upon the top of the body, so that decomposition would follow
instantly. When the grave was reopened some twenty-four years after, to
bestow a more decent burial on the relics, nothing remained but a few
fragments of calcined bone.
Garencières reads _Princesse de beauté tant venuste_, which will not
scan any better than the line of the edition of 1558; but he translates
_au chef menée_, I find, as “shall be brought to the general,” and the
feminine termination is then right. This helps to confirm my rendering
above. His annotation says that the only difficulty about the quatrain is
as to what city is meant. As, however, he suggests no historical allusion
whatever, he leaves every difficulty unsolved.
I think that most readers will be inclined to allow that this is a very
extraordinary forecast, and that _La cité au glaive_ as a name for Paris,
and what has been perpetrated there, is both poetic and terrific in a
very high degree—a sobriquet that, once heard, is likely to cling in
the memory for ever. To devise epithets of this simplicity and force
constitutes an author at once master of utterance; no matter what may be
the shortcomings of the adjacent text. But, when you find these startling
felicities perpetually recurring to illustrate facts historical,—facts
that will not come into mortal ken for centuries after the death of the
writer,—stiff, indeed, must be the reader’s neck if he cannot bow it a
little, as to a man of God passing by; or, if he would rather have it
so, to the occasional divinity shining through man’s nature, that will
not, cannot wholly die when death has done its worst. From Hecla to the
tropics all rational creatures should rejoice at such a fact. What is the
new world of Columbus to this? Why, nothing but a new hemisphere of dirt.
A spirit, that can read time future, must be a spirit whose habitation
is Eternity. It is this hope kindles as we decipher, in the stillness of
night, rune upon strange rune of the oracular sage of Salon.
_Century X.—Quatrain 17._ [I. 184.]
La Royne Ergaste[260] voyant sa fille blesme
Par un regret dans l’estomach enclos:
Cris lamentables seront lors d’Angolesme,
Et au germain mariage forclos.
_Translation._
The stranger Queen, seeing her daughter fading
By reason of the deep regret she endured inwardly:
The cries of Angoulême will be lamentable,
And the marriage with her cousin-germain foreclosed.
The Princess did marry the Duc d’Angoulême in 1799, but there was no
issue,—_mariage forclos_. The Queen wished to marry her daughter to a
German Prince: hence all the grief. The Abbé Torné-Chavigny (“L’Histoire
prédite et jugée par Nostradamus,” ii. 28) had the merit, M. le Pelletier
says, of this learned interpretation. I cannot quite see this, as M.
Bouys gave the same interpretation as far back as 1806, though with a
particularity a little less minute. The prophecy thus unravelled is the
more wonderful, as the event seems so little worth recording. There is
the same exactitude and precision shown as where a kingdom is at stake.
_Century IX.—Quatrain 77._ [I. 185.]
Le regne prins[261] le Roy convicra,
La dame prinse à mort jurés à sort,
La vie a Royne fils on desniera,
Et la pellix[262] au fort de la consort.
Pierre Rigaud’s edition reads _conjurera_ for _convicra_, and that,
at least, makes the line scan, which _convicra_ does not. Bouys says
that some ancient editions read _conviera, commitari per viam_, and
then it would mean to arrange the funeral cortège of the King. I think
_conjurera_ the best reading, for that might be taken to mean that they
condemned the King by jurors, or jury, as the Queen was in the next line.
_Translation._
The assembly will condemn the King taken,
[And] the Queen taken to death by jurors sworn by lot;
They will deny life to the Dauphin (_à Royne fils_),
And the prostitute at the fort will partake of the same fate.
Upon the word _jurés_, in the second line, M. le Pelletier remarks
that the Convention, erecting itself into a supreme court of justice,
proceeded to condemn the King to death. But the judgment upon
Marie-Antoinette was passed by the _Tribunal révolutionnaire_, newly set
up, which proceeded by jurors chosen by lot, _jurés à sort_. He further
says that this _jury_ is an institution borrowed from England, and he
erroneously fancies that it had been first introduced into England at the
Revolution, and had no existence there, even by name, during the lifetime
of Nostradamus. This shows how little a Frenchman, when even well read,
cares about English institutions. Pettingal almost proves that the Roman
_judices_, and Greek δικασταί, were jurors. There has been great and
profitless dispute, as to whether the Anglo-Saxons had juries, or whether
they came in at the Conquest. If they did it would be strange, for they
died out in Normandy. If the practice be Roman, it would have prevailed
in England as in Normandy, both having been under Roman law forms. Coke,
Blackstone, and many others, confidently maintain its existence here
prior to the Conquest. If Anglo-Saxon it would still be Roman. Were
it Scandinavian in origin, or were it Teutonic, it would equally have
prevailed here before the Conquest. So that the whole discussion has
an interest merely archæological; and leaves the _trial by jury_, no
matter what its origin, a thing of immemorial usage in these islands. You
might as well try, by chemical analysis, to ascertain when oxygen first
entered as a component part into the air men breathe. If you could settle
the question it would be no use; whilst the time lost in discussing it
might otherwise be well employed. But the forensic usage was not so in
France itself, as modern Frenchmen think, for in old Glossaries, like
Roquefort’s, you find _jurie_, not _jurée_: “Assise où l’on prononce sur
le rapport des jurés.”
They delivered the poor Dauphin to the _cordonnier_ Simon, with orders to
let him die slowly. The inhuman villains seem to have felt they could not
condemn a child to public execution; so they give orders to a murderer to
make away with him by ill usage and starvation, a process that would have
rendered the guillotine welcome and a boon.
The last line admits of three interpretations. M. le Pelletier takes the
_pellix_ to stand for the National Convention itself, saying that it had
prostituted justice in condemning an innocent prince over whom it had no
jurisdiction. But clearly it had no jurisdiction over the King or Queen.
He then takes the fort to be the _Conciergerie_, to which it consigned
its own members, _consorts_, as an introduction to the scaffold. This is
very striking, but the quatrain does not appear to me to threaten members
of the Assembly at all. The unity of conception is best maintained
by limiting its meaning to the fate of Royalty; and Bouys places an
excellent and forcible interpretation upon it without breaking the unity
of purpose. He says that it relates to the Dubarri, the King’s courtesan,
and that the fort is her palace of Luciennes, which had anciently been a
strong place or fort. This is good, if the Château de Luciennes bears it
out; but the _fort_ may so easily be _sort_ with the old _s_ type, which
is scarcely distinguishable from an _f_, that I think we might very well
substitute it. We should then construe the last line
“And [consign] the prostitute to the fate of the Queen consort.”
This interpretation requires less force to be employed upon the line, and
less explanation than any of the others. The forms of the _s_ and _f_ are
nearly identical. The reading that brings simplicity with it, and removes
stumblingblocks out of the way, usually proves the safest and the best.
Here we remove the complication introduced by the word _fort_, which
otherwise requires explanation, and it runs: _The courtesan shares a like
fate with the Queen_. It is now for the reader to select the best.
_Sixaine 55._ [I. 186.]
Un peu devant ou après très-grand’ dame,
Son ame au ciel, et son corps soubs la lame,
De plusieurs gens regrettée sera,
Tous ses parens seront en grand’ tristesse,
Pleurs et souspirs d’une dame en jeunesse,
Et à deux Grands la deuil delaissera.
_Translation._
A little before or after a very great lady,
The soul [of Madame Elizabeth shall rise] to heaven, her body under
the blade,
She will be grieved for by many persons;
All her family connections will be cast into deep sorrow,
One lady very young [Duchesse d’Angoulême will shed] tears and sighs,
And two great ones will be depressed with mourning.
This can be mistaken for no one but Madame Elizabeth, the sister of Louis
XVI., her niece, the Duchess d’Angoulême, and the two brothers of Madame
Elizabeth, the Count of Provence and the Count of Artois. This is not
one of the very striking stanzas, but the forecast is still notable, and
occupies its position very well as one in a considerable series.
_Century I.—Quatrain 58._ [I. 187.]
Tranché le ventre naistra avec deux testes
Et quatre bras: quelques ans entiers vivra,
Jour qui[263] Alquiloye[264] celebrera ses festes,
Fossen, Turin, chef Ferrare suivra.
_Translation._
The belly cut shall spring again with two heads
And four arms: _Aquiloye_ shall live several years,
In great force (_entiers_) what (_jour qui_) time he holds.
Fossen, Turin, Ferrara shall fall under his domination (_suivra
chef_).
This is a very crabbed, but very wonderful quatrain.
The elder branch of the Bourbons was cut short in the person of
Marie-Antoinette (_le ventre tranchée_); shall spring up again in two
heads, Louis XVIII. and Charles X. The two heads being crowned, the
four lesser princes are called arms and uncrowned. They are counted
thus: The Duc de Normandy, who died in the Temple, June 8, 1795; the
Duc de Berri, assassinated January 13, 1820; the Duc d’Angoulême; and
the Duc de Bordeaux, exiled August 16, 1830, who, though he had so many
close chances, died without the crown,—an arm only, not a head, a hand
tenaciously to the last holding to its white handkerchief as a flag.
Zurich and Fossano stand, by synecdoche, for Piedmont, and Ferrara for
the Papal States.
This brings us to the end of the Louis Seize series. Let us, before
passing on to a fresh series, just give a glance at the ground we have
traversed; and endeavour to estimate the value of the historical facts
prefigured for us by Nostradamus in his book more than two hundred years
before the earliest of them began to take effect upon the stage of
actuality.