Napoleon had provided himself with a means of escape, should he fall
alive into the hands of the enemy. Yvan, his surgeon, had given him a
packet of opium, which he had ever since carried round his neck. The
valet heard him rise in the night, and saw through the half-opened door
that he mixed something in a glass of water, drank it off, and returned
to bed. He quickly felt that his end was approaching, and had his most
trusted followers called to his bedside, Yvan amongst the rest; but, when
he heard Napoleon complain that the action of the poison was too slow, he
precipitately quitted Fontainebleau, as we have seen.
A very heavy slumber supervened, accompanied with profuse perspiration,
and when he awoke the symptoms had disappeared, the dose having proved
of insufficient quantity, or time had deprived it of its efficacy.
Napoleon, astonished at the failure, simply exclaimed, “_Dieu ne le veut
pas!_” and professing, perhaps for the first time in his life, to yield
to Providence, resigned himself quietly to his new destiny. On board
the _Northumberland_ he strongly reprobated suicide. It would have been
instructive to have heard the arguments employed by this intellectual
giant, merely as a mental acrobat exhibiting, and as showing how far the
intellect may be effective in illustrating the path of duty. But on
nothing could Napoleon’s opinion be worth so little as on a question of
morals, where the soul’s instinct is chief guide. The rats ate his heart,
it is said, in an interim of the medical dissection. I doubt it; he had
eaten it himself long before he left Brienne.
On the morning of the 13th, Napoleon rose and dressed as usual. His
objections had vanished, and his next act was to ratify the treaty—a
solemn act, which he took the earliest opportunity that offered to betray
and break.
_Century X.—Quatrain 24._ [I. 227.]
Le captif prince aux Itales[350] vaincu
Passera Gennes par mer[351] jusqu’a Marseille,
Par grand effort des forains[352] survaincu,
Sauf[353] coup de feu,[354] barril liqueur d’abeille.
_Translation._
The captive prince, conquered, is sent to Elba;
He will sail across the Gulf of Genoa to Marseilles.
By a great effort of the foreign forces he is overcome,
Though he escapes the fire, his bees yield blood by the barrel.
He ran the blockade, March 1, 1815, and landed at Cannes, close to
Marseilles, crossing the Gulf of Genoa, till defeated at Waterloo on the
18th of June, “seeking death,” says Le Pelletier, “without being able
to find it,” (_où il sera sauf de coups de feu_). When the smoke rises
from the bottomless pit, “shall men seek death and not find it; and shall
desire to die, and death shall flee from them” (Rev. ix. 6). Napoleon
comes out of the island Æthalia, or metallic smoke, and escapes the
murderous artillery that kills his men, though it were far fitter he
should die. His beehive is not burned with fire, but other liquor than
honey flows freely,—the life-blood of his bees.
_Century II.—Quatrain 70._
Le dard du ciel[355] fera[356] son estandue,[357]
Morts en parlant, grande execution.
La pierre en l’arbre, la fiere gent[358] rendue,
Bruit humain monstre[359] purge expiation.
The third and fourth lines will neither of them scan. _La fiere gent_
should be written _la fier’ gent_, _fier_ being read as one syllable.
_Bruit_, in the fourth line, is to be read as one syllable. Garencières
has _Brait_, which, though it have no meaning, shows perhaps that it was
one syllable.
_Translation._
The thunderbolt shall strike his standard;
He shall die speaking proud words, great is the execution.
The stone is in the tree, the proud nation yields,
The monster purges his human fame by expiation.
The thunderbolt from heaven shall strike down his standard, and he fails
or dies[360] uttering haughty words. There is terrible execution done.
The stone[361] is in the tree. The proud nation yields. The hero purges
by expiation his human renown.
In spite of all these doubts interposed, this yields us a quatrain of a
sufficiently clear sense, in conveying two leading ideas; a providential
and mighty overthrow of a giant leader and braggart of swelling words;
and of a proud nation split in battle, as a tree is by thunder-stroke.
The forcible picture is not unworthy of Waterloo or the Battle of Mont
Saint-Jean, as the French call it; even though it may not be impossible
to find some other battle since the death of Nostradamus that it might
represent almost as well, if not quite so fully, as the tremendous day
of Waterloo, June 18, 1815. Englishmen seem half afraid now to mention
the day with pride, for fear of hurting French susceptibilities. To
mention it insultingly, or in a hostile spirit, is unpardonable; but to
speak of it modestly and thankfully, and of Wellington as a great soldier
and benefactor to us, is only manly and proper. The man who has not the
courage to do this firmly and inoffensively in the company of Frenchmen
is only one of the many cowards amongst us, who lead the French to think
that, however great things our fathers may have done in the past, the
spirit has fled from us that would repeat them in the future.
_Century IX.—Quatrain 86._ [I. 230.]
Du Bourg la reyne parviêdront droit à Chartres,
Et feront près du pont Anthoni pause:
Sept pour la paix cauteleux comme martres,
Feront entrée[362] d’armée a Paris clause.[363]
_Translation._
From Bourg la Reine they shall march on Chartres,
They shall camp close to Pont Anthony:
Seven chiefs for peace, cautious as martens,
Shall enter Paris cut off from its army.
The generals of the seven nations coalesced shall, under pretext of
peace, but really out of jealousy of France, says M. le Pelletier, and in
virtue of the capitulation of the 3rd of July, enter Paris; now cut off
from her army (_clos d’armée_), which retreats upon Chartres, passing by
Bourg la Reine and Pont d’Anthony, where it camps. The quatrain does not
at all obviously read so, but we must suppose that it is the French army
which goes to Chartres. We are not, however, bound to believe that the
marten-like and cunning seven only pretended to establish peace out of
jealousy to France. All Europe and France herself sighed for peace; and
if, when victorious, the enemies were inclined to take back what France
had robbed them of severally, that would not be very wonderful. The seven
nations signatory to the treaties of 1815 were England, Austria, Prussia,
Russia, Spain, Sweden, and Portugal.
This is a very remarkable forecast, and shows that although Nostradamus
is a national prophet of France, and nearly all his one thousand
quatrains turn upon her and her interests, he seldom exhibits a particle
of partisanship, and you would not know he was a Frenchman from any
word that he lets fall. He strictly limits himself to the utterance of
his vision in the tersest phrase, and the most forcible words that he
can bring to bear for that purpose. I think there is no other instance
known of such inviolable temperance. A man sits down in his study
and prophecies; commits his visions to paper in prose; turns them
deliberately afterwards, and in cold blood, into the pithiest poetry he
knows how; shakes up in a hat, as we have previously remarked, all the
quatrains together, and, when he has effectually destroyed all sequence
and order, counts them out into even hundreds; then, without a word of
note or comment, he sends them forth in type into the world to sink or
swim; be ridiculed or admired, be understood or mistaken, perish or
endure; until such period as their fulfilment in the centuries of time is
realized, and the sleeping world awakens to the miracle, that has slept
also, beside the sleeping world, till light arose to make both clear at
once.
_Century II.—Quatrain 67._ [I. 232.]
Le blonde au nez forche[364] viendra commettre[365]
Par[366] la duelle[367] et chassera dehors:
Les exilés dedans fera remettre,
Aux lieux marins commettant[368] les plus fors.[369]
_Translation._
The light-haired one will come to blows with the hooked nose
For the second time, and chase him out:
The exiled will replace him within,
Consigning the strongest of the party to a fortress in the sea.
Louis XVIII. is designated _Le blond au nez fourchu_ according to Le
Pelletier. _Le blond_ is, no doubt, the sign of the Capets, as shown
by several other stanzas in Nostradamus, but not the aquiline nose, I
think; that, I believe, is intended for Napoleon. So that Louis XVIII.
comes to blows with the hooked nose, or Napoleon, for the second time and
drives him out; he who was exiled before now replacing him within. The
strongest, that is Napoleon and his officers, are committed _aux lieux
marins_; which either means to the English, who go down to the sea in
ships, or else to St. Helena, a prison in the sea.
_Century X.—Quatrain 90._ [I. 233.]
Cent fois mourra le tyran inhumain;
Mis à son lieu sçavant et debonnaire:
Tout le senat sera dessous sa main,
Fasché sera par malin[370] temeraire.
_Translation._
The inhuman tyrant shall die a hundred times;
A learned and debonnaire King shall take his place:
All the senate shall be under his control,
And he shall be grieved by a bold criminal.
Napoleon is the inhuman tyrant to die a hundred deaths: one his suicidal
attempt; another Elba, with its cinerary and fuliginous ashes; another
Waterloo; and lastly St. Helena, with its ten times ten remorseful
hours, regrets, and studious falsifications of the history of his life.
_Debonnaire_ is, with Nostradamus, an epithet of the Capet family, and
stands doubtless for Louis XVIII. put into his place. The King finds the
Senate quite submissive to his will, but he is cut to the heart by the
daring attempt of the criminal Louvel upon the Duc de Berri, February 13,
1820.
This is the excellent interpretation of M. le Pelletier. Bouys (p. 80),
writing in 1806 under the full influence of the demon of Napoleon,
gives it a very different reading. The inhuman tyrant with him can be
nobody but Robespierre, who, with a pistol shot, endeavoured to put an
end to himself ineffectually, but blew away half his face, suffering
thirty hours of fearful torment, and finally was dragged to the place
of execution amidst the maledictions of the populace. The _sçavant et
debonnaire_ to Bouys is, of course, Napoleon. The _malin teméraire_ is
a forgotten Georges, whose conspiracy gave a little momentary anxiety
to Napoleon. Here terminate the oracles assigned to Napoleon by M. le
Pelletier. But Bouys adduces several others, which sufficiently relate
to the Emperor to be enumerated here. It is painful to see how men
manipulate these things to suit their theories. We will give now a
quatrain that Bouys cites, as he thinks it favourable to Napoleon; but
he carefully omits the one next to it in the same Century, purely, as it
seems, because it is unfavourable to Napoleon.
_Century II.—Quatrain 29._ [Bouys, 82.]
L’oriental sortira de son siège,
Passer les monts Apennons voir la Gaule:
Transpercera le ciel, les eaux et neige,
Et un chacun frappera de sa gaule.
_Translation._
The oriental will quit his post,
To cross the Apennines and see after Gaul:
He will transfix the heaven, the mountain ice and snows,
Striking each of them with his magic wand.
The Oriental, _i.e._ Napoleon in Egypt, will leave his army behind there,
after almost turning Mahometan; return and cross the Apennines and Alps
to look after the Directory and their doings in France. He will soon even
subdue the elements and Nature by his marvellous roads over the mountains
of ice and snow, and will strike each as with the rod of Moses, or the
wand of a magician; for the archaic and unusual word _gaule_ may mean
that, as well as a riding switch. Bouys misses the plainer meaning of the
first line, but is determined it shall represent Napoleon, so he takes
_Oriental_ to be Corsica, as being east of Toulon. The passage of Mont
St. Bernard with cavalry and artillery he gives rightly enough; the Alps
have to be introduced for the Apennines. The quatrain following next to
this he passes _sub silentio_, for the reason above assigned, though it
is pregnant with meaning; and how this should have been overlooked by M.
le Pelletier, I cannot quite understand; but so it is.
_Century II.—Quatrain 30._ [II. 45.]
Un qui les dieux d’Annibal infernaux,
Fera[371] renaistre, effrayeur des humains.
Oncq’ plus d’horreur ne plus pire journaux,
Qu’avint[372] viendra[373] par Babel aux Romains.
_Translation._
One whom the gods of Hannibal from the lower regions
Shall cause to be born again [shall be], a terror to mankind.
Never will more horror, nor more evil days,
Come upon the Romans. The confusion will be like that before from
Babel.
Hannibal and Napoleon are the only great generals who ever forced their
military way over the Alps successfully; Hannibal, with his _acetum_,
vinegar, or hatchet, as some have interpreted Livy; and Napoleon for
cavalry and heavy pieces of artillery. He seemed to be the marvellous
Carthaginian born again out of the shades of Hades, a scourge and flail
of men: Babel itself not worse in the confusion that fell upon Rome,
and the Church of Rome through him. We have given this before, at p.
228, but repeat it here with further enlargement, as it belongs more to
Napoleon than to the Revolution. Garencières thinks it was fulfilled when
Charles V. sacked Rome. If we consider, as I do, that the two stanzas are
inseparable, they will fit only Napoleon.
We come now to a quatrain that M. le Pelletier has overlooked, but which
Bouys (p. 83) with some reason attributes to Napoleon.
_Century IV.—Quatrain 54._
Du nom qui onque[374] ne fut un Roi Gaulois
Jamais ne fut un foudre si crantif.
Tremblant l’Italie,[375] l’Espagne et les Anglois,
De femme estrangiers[376] grandement attentif.
_Translation._
Of a name that never belonged to Gallic king,
Never was there so terrible a thunderbolt.
He made Italy tremble, Spain and the English.
He wooed a foreign lady with assiduity.
Bouys introduces into his interpretation of this a good deal of foolish
adulation of Napoleon; pretending that he was not only _crantif_ towards
his enemies, which we must render _a cause of terror_, but also that
he was himself _crantif_, very tender of the lives of his troops. To
prove this monstrous proposition, he quotes the claptrap uttered by him
before the battle of Austerlitz: “I regret to think how many of these
brave fellows I shall lose. I feel for them as if veritably they were my
own children. Indeed I sometimes reproach myself for this sentiment of
tenderness; I sometimes fear it may end in rendering me unfit to carry on
war.” This was, indeed, an heroic fear, says Bouys. We are content to let
its heroism wrestle with its hypocrisy; we foresee which will come by the
first fall.
Garencières translates that the warrior, whoever he may be, will follow
after strange women; and that would fit Napoleon, though not specially.
But we think it better to render it with Bouys as indicating the Empress
Josephine, who was of Creole blood, and therefore foreign; or Marie
Louise, equally foreign. If the latter, _Estrange_ would stand for
Austrian (_v._ Century I., Quatrain 83).
_Century VIII.—Quatrain 53._ [I. 269.]
Dedans Bolongne voudra laver ses fautes,[377]
Il ne pourra au temple du soleil
Il volera faisant choses si[378] hautes,
En hierarchie n’en fut oncq un pareil.
_Translation._
In Boulogne he would make up for his shortcomings,
But cannot penetrate the temple of the sun.
He hastens away to perform the very highest things.
In the hierarchy he never had an equal.
This is a singularly interesting quatrain. It has received three
different interpretations; all three somewhat curious. Garencières opens
the ball. He says there are two towns called _Bolloin_, one in Italy,
one in France; that is, Bologna in Italy, and Boulogne in France. He
thinks Boulogne is intended, and that Richelieu, a man of high things,
and beyond the hierarchy, vowed, a little before his death, that if
he recovered he would make a pilgrimage to Boulogne; to the Temple of
Miracles there, dedicated to the Virgin, here described as the _Sun_,
from that passage in the Revelation, “And there appeared a woman clothed
with the sun;” but the cardinal took the road of death, which led, not
through Boulogne, to the shades below, and certainly not to the Temple
of the Sun. This has an interest of its own, but, as an interpretation,
is utterly wide of the mark. Richelieu on a repentant pilgrimage to the
Temple of the Sun would have been admirable as a caricature in Rabelais;
but, would be no fitter subject for Nostradamus’s pen, than if a lady of
title went to Aix-les-Bains to take the waters there. And observe, he had
to invent a Temple of the Sun to send him to, for never was there such a
temple at Boulogne.
We have also Le Pelletier trying his hand, and he realizes it in Louis
Napoleon, in his escapade of 1840. When he was made Emperor, his Italian
exploit is represented as a flight to the _Temple of the Sun_. But how he
could suppose _that_ inferior mortal, to be referred to in _n’en fut oncq
un pareil_, I cannot divine.
Bouys and others attribute it to Napoleon, and his intention to descend
upon England from Boulogne in the flotilla. Is there not a column
there, ridiculously built to commemorate the failure? Is there not
also a Boulogne medal struck (Ford’s “Spain,” i. 272) with one of the
Napoleonic falsehoods (an endless series) imprinted on its face, which
runs, “Descente en Angleterre frappé à Londres”? These are the ridiculous
touches; but now let us enter on the serious interpretation and see what
that will yield us.
At Boulogne the Emperor will endeavour to blot England from the map of
Europe, and so redeem all his previous shortcomings in that direction. He
promises himself the satisfaction of dictating his terms in London, and
possibly entertained, in that strange brain of his, some dream that he
would be crowned on that royalty-confirming stone of Scone in Westminster
Abbey; where, tradition tells, the Temple of Apollo was shaken down by
earthquake, A.D. 154, the Temple of the Sun. But _Il ne pourra au temple
du soleil_, says Nostradamus: and history has thought fit in this as on
so many other occasions to endorse the forecast of the prophet. Bouys
adds, “Napoléon finira par faire la conquête de l’Angleterre;” but Bouys
is not Nostradamus; and Napoleon, like Richelieu, went to the shades
below from St. Helena, and did not go to the Temple of the Sun nor to
the Stone of Scone. He went away, however, from Boulogne to very great
things, as men count greatness; and was quite without an equal in the
hierarchy of kings.
LOUIS XVIII. AND LOUIS PHILIPPE.
We now come to the Restoration of Louis XVIII.
_Presage 38._ [I. 235.]
Roy salué Victeur,[379] Impereateur,[380]
La foy faussée. Le Royal fait[381] congnu:[382]
Sang[383] Mathien[384] Roy fait[385] supereateur,[386]
De gent[387] superbe humble[388] par[389] pleurs venu.[390]
This is a very crabbed quatrain.
_Translation._
The King is saluted victor and dominator,
The oath falsified: The King makes himself known again:
Grandson of Louis XIV. becomes King,
Is called back by the proud people humiliated to tears.
Louis XVIII. is proclaimed King, May 3, 1814, but the people take up
Napoleon from Elba, March 1, 1815, thus breaking faith. Louis XVIII. (Le
Royal) is again recognized, July 8, 1815; the grandson of Louis XIV.
(_sang Æmathien_), a name conferred by Nostradamus on Louis XIV., who
assumed the emblem of the Sun, Æmathien being son of Aurora, who opens
the gates of the morning sun. This grandson becomes now undisputed King,
the humiliated French nation recalling him with tears.
_Century X.—Quatrain 16._ [I. 236.]
Heureux au regne de France, heureux de vie,
Ignorant sang, mort fureur et rapine,
Par nom flateur[391] sera mis en envie:
Roy desrobé,[392] trop de foye en cuisine.
_Translation._
Happy in the kingdom of France, happy in life,
Free from blood, violent death and angry rapine,
He will have a flattering name, and be an object of desire:
A King retired, with too much faith in the kitchen.
Here we are to take Louis XVIII. as restored to the throne of France:
his life passes happily, without violent experiences of blood, death,
rage, or rapine. The flattering name was given to him of _Désiré_, that
is prophetically hinted in the words “_il sera mis en envie_.” He will
not devote sufficient attention to his public duties, so that he may be
described as _desrobé_, retired or retained at home; and he will be too
much addicted to enjoyments of the table,—_trop de foye en cuisine_. The
gastronomy was proverbial; the obesity consequent upon it made him grow
inert, so that he gradually let the affairs of State drift without giving
them due attention.
_Century III.—Quatrain 96._ [I. 238.]
Chef de Fossan[393] aura gorge couppée
Par le ducteur[394] du limier et levrier;
Le faict patré[395] par ceux du mont Tarpée,[396]
Saturne en Leo[397] 13 de Fevrier.
_Translation._
A prince of Fossano shall have his throat cut
By the keeper of his hounds and greyhounds:
The attempt will be made by those of the Tarpeian rock,
Saturn being in Leo on 13th February.
Fossana is put, by synecdoche, for Sardinia. A prince, therefore, of
Sardinia shall be stabbed by the Keeper of the Kennel, instigated by
Republicans, when Saturn is in opposition to the sign of the Lion, on
February 13, 1820. M. le Pelletier, who seems somewhat learned in the
houses of the stars, says that Saturn was in opposition to, and not in
conjunction with, Leo on this occasion. But Nostradamus leaves it open.
The Tarpeian rock is figuratively employed to signify the _Mountain_,
or the demagogues and the Republicans generally. The Mons Tarpeius was
first named from murder, and was for ages a scene of murder. Tarpeia,
who betrayed the Capitol to the Sabines, was crushed by their shields
at the gate, and her father, Spurius Tarpeius, was thrown over the
battlements by order of Romulus. Children ill-formed at birth were flung
from its heights. It was better known as Capitolinus, so called (_caput
Toli_) from the head of Tolus, found there when digging foundations for
the Temple of Jupiter: thus the place of the skull, a Golgotha from the
beginning of Rome. Later on criminals were sentenced to be thrown from
it. Many of these deadly associations were, no doubt, present to the
mind of Nostradamus, and made this mountain of death seem to him fit to
foreshadow the death that should emanate from the French mountain. To
dwell upon this is of physiological interest, as showing how very closely
the natures of the poet and the prophet overlap each other; so that, as
in the rainbow colours, there is no line to be drawn as to where one
begins or another ends:—they may be seen, but not severed.
The Duc de Berri was the son of Marie Therèse of Savoy, married to the
Comte d’Artois, she being the daughter of Victor-Amédée III., King of
Sardinia. This Sardinian was to have ruled France, and, with but one
intervening, to have followed the Corsican in the occupation of the
throne. Louvel, the murderer, stabbed him coming from the opera, and wore
the King’s livery at the moment of the attempt. The forecast is again
wonderful in prefiguring every particular short of the names of the two
individuals. The nationalities are given, the calling of Louvel, and the
day of the month. If all this be Chance, some hare-brained few would
prefer it to what they know of Certainty.
_Century V.—Quatrain 4._ [I. 240.]
Le gros mastin de cité dechassé,[398]
Sera fasché de l’estrange[399] alliance:
Après aux champs avoir le cerf chassé,[400]
Le loup et l’ours se donront[401] defiance.
_Translation._
The great mastiff chased from the city
Will be afflicted by the strange alliance:
When the stag is driven to the fields,
The wolf and bear will commence to mistrust each other.
The Duc de Bordeaux is the great mastiff, dethroned August 9, 1830, by
Louis Philippe, in the dog-days, when the star _Sirius_ is in opposition.
_Le Grand Chien_ burning in the horizon is a synonym for the _gros
mastin_; the city, of course, is Paris. Charles X., who was fond of the
chase, is turned from the great huntsman to the stag. The wolf is Louis
Philippe, a name which lends itself to Lou. P. The bear represents,
according to M. le Pelletier, _la Montagne_, in the assembly, because
bears make their lair in the highest situations. We need not insist on
this resemblance or characteristic pointed out by Le Pelletier.