[In the following excerpt from an essay sympathetic to Nostradamus's prophetic skill, Ward examines several of the quatrains. "Our business, " he writes, "will be merely to translate these obsolete expressions, to interpret a few of the anagrams and strange allusions, as far as may be, and to apply the sense so sifted out to some of the many historic events foreshadowed."]

[We will here] set forth a few of the Quatrains of Michael Nostradamus, applying them to the events of which they were anticipatory, and so leave them to make their own impression upon the reader's mind, whilst, if space can be spared, a few words may be devoted to the remarkable man who wrote them….

There is a round thousand of quatrains to pick and choose from: all thrown together purposely in hopeless disorder, and in utter disregard of the chronological sequence of the events. Had the chronological order been preserved to us, doubtless many more of the Quatrains could be rendered intelligible; that clue, however, has for the writer's security been purposely, though silently, withdrawn. Out of so large a number only a very few examples can be selected. We will open with one which is not especially striking: when first read it even seems to be mere jargon, but yet when explained it takes a form and coherency that point clearly to Henri Quatre as the subject of it. It would task an ingenious mind to adapt it with equal force to any other historical character existing. It runs:

Mandosus tost viendra à son haut règne,Mettant arrière un peu les Norlaris:Le rouge blesme, le masle à l'interrègne,Le jeune crainte, et frayeur Barbaris.

Translation. —Mendosus shall soon attain to his high dominion, setting back those of Lorraine a little; the pale old Cardinal, the male of the interregnum, the timid youth, and the alarmed barbarian.

This at a first glance resembles unmitigated blague. But when you take mendosus, full of faults, reading u for v in the old fashion, it converts into the anagram of Vendosme, or Vendôme. Again Norlaris is the anagrammatic transposition of Lorrains, the patronymic of the Guise family. Michel de Nostredame was a Romanist, and heretics are heavily disparaged by him throughout the whole course of his work. To him, therefore, Henri IV., the heretic Vendôme, furnishing the anagram mendosus, or full of faults, would seem to be providentially so named—a man who changed his religion thrice. His mother, Jeanne d'Albert, brought him up as a Protestant. To escape St. Bartholomew's massacre, Aug. 24, 1572, he professed Catholicism. In 1576, that he might head the Calvinist party, he relapsed to Protestantism. But in order to ascend the throne of France it became necessary to proclaim himself Catholic. By this change, and by the Salic law, he excluded the Lorraine princes from the throne of France. He no less shut out the old Cardinal de Bourbon—le rouge blesme, the red pale one, or white with age; the Duc de Mayenne, also, who was Lieutenant-General of the kingdom during the interregnum. Le jeune crainte stands for the young Duc de Guise; whilst the Barbaris seems to be the savage Philip II. of Spain, whose pretension to the crown was derived to him through Elizabeth his wife, the daughter of Henri II. Philip allied himself with the Guises in support of the Catholic League. This explanatory elaboration, referring to merely four lines of the original text, may convey some idea to the reader of the difficulty attending the interpretation of a writer such as Nostradamus. There are stanzas by the hundred like this, so that a busy and sceptical world may be very well excused for dropping the whole volume into oblivion, for ridiculing it as jargon, or if, going farther still, it should condemn it as imposture. Ridicule, abuse and slander have their uses, but they are not arguments. The above should suffice to prove that such lines contain a good deal more than at a first glance meets the eye.

Quatrain 18, century x., will be found to amplify on the same theme, a little less obscurely perhaps. We have not room to enlarge upon Presage 76, but Henri le Grande is there called Le Grande Cape, or Capet, and his abjuring of Protestantism and assent to the Papal conditions (July 21, 1593,) amid the silence of his enemies, is very intelligibly forecast.

Sixtain vi. relates to the treason of Biron under the anagram of Robin, and is a phenomenal piece of work. It even mentions the name of Lafin, who betrays him to the king. But we have no room to indulge curiosity on this point. In century vi., quatrain 70, there occurs a perfectly distinct prophecy touching Henry the Great, as Le Grand Chyren (Chyren being the anagram of Henri). It says that he will be chief of the world, and may be rendered thus:

Chief of the world Henri le Grand shall be,
More loved in death than life, more honoured he;
His name and praise shall rise above the skies,
And men shall call him victor when he dies.

Voltaire says of him in the "Henriade":

Il fut de ses sujets le vainqueur et le père.

That Henri IV. had the Quatrains of Nostradamus presented to him we know as a matter of history. We also know that he aspired to a European monarchy. It might form an interesting subject of inquiry for some historical essayist to handle, how much that line of Nostradamus had to do with suggesting the germ-thought to the king:

Au chef du monde le grand Chyren sera.

But we must pass on, for this is no time to pursue the theme; though it be one surely not unworthy of study to watch prophecy, not only forecasting events, but converting from a vision into a fact of history, from a forecast to a cause.

One more passage we propose to examine of historical detail, but of minor importance, before we open up two or three that relate to epoch-making events. It is desirable to furnish specimens of both kinds, for the minuter details will best illustrate the personal idiosyncrasy of the prophet, whilst the greater topics, which refer to known events, will most interest the world at large as to the possibility, authenticity, and value of prophecy itself.

The punishment of the great Montmorency (October 30, 1632, in the reign of Louis XIII.), shall be the next taken, because it sheds a sudden and as it were accidental light upon a private individual, and discloses a name that history seems only to have inscribed once upon her page, and that once by an off-chance, as one may say.

Le lys Dauffois portera dans NanciJusques en Flandres électeur de l'empire;Neufve obturée au grand MontmorencyHors lieux prouvés, délivré à Clerepayne.

The Dauphin shall carry his lily standard into Nancy, just as in Flanders the elector of Trèves shall be carried prisoner of the Spaniards into Brussels. A new prison will be given to the great Montmorency; who will be delivered for execution into the hands of Clerepayne. This man will behead him in a place not devoted to executions.

Obturée is from the Latin obturare, to shut up closely. Prouvés is to be taken as approuvés. Louis XIII., it may be remarked, was the first who bore the title of Dauphin of France—and since the publication, be it observed, in 1566, of Nostradamus's work—he entered Nancy on September 25, 1633, one day later than the entry of his army. In 1635 he crossed into Flanders in aid of the Elector, who had been carried a prisoner into Brussels by the Spaniards on March 26 of that year. Our prophet then reverts to October 30, 1632, when the execution of Montmorency, for rebellion, occurred. He was first confined (obturée) in the Hôtel de Ville at Toulouse, then just newly built (neufve). In the courtyard of this building he was executed by a common soldier of the name of Clerepayne, and not, as was customary, at the spot appointed for public executions, such as was La Grève at Paris, or Tower Hill in London.

It so chances that in two contemporary records the name of Clerepayne is attested: Etienne Joubert is one, and the Chevalier de Jant another. By the researches of M. Motret it has been shown further that the family, by solicitation, obtained two formal concessions from the king in deviation from the official order, which would have named the place publique or marché for the ceremony. The first concession was that it should be with closed doors, and the other that a soldier should be substituted for the common headsman.

When the reader has familiarised himself with the obsolete language and verbal contortions of this oracular Frenchman, and has quietly realised in his mind the all-but-forgotten historical details above repieced, the solemn scene of great local importance, and of intense though but temporary interest, will come to life before his eyes again, and the vivid historical picture will startle him when compared with the prophetic distich which the event interprets for him. He will become aware strangely that the picture of that event, that has just reshaped itself in his mind two hundred years after its occurrence, must, one hundred years before it occurred, have similarly visited the mental retina of him who could pen the lines. We cannot call it poetry, but it is brimful of imagination, and Tacitus himself grows wordy when set against the brevity of its utterance. It seems from this that to anticipate is, though less common, as human as to look back. It is incredible, yet how can you disbelieve it? There it stood in type in the Royal Library the very day the thing was enacting; it had stood there for eighty long years before, and the same volume stands upon the shelves of the same library to-day. It is not to be understood, but it must be accepted; you may refuse the prophecy, but incredulity incarnate can never change the facts. Adequate explanation will be acceptable, and we invite ingenuity to attempt it. There were more things in the earth and heaven than entered, we know, into Horatio's philosophy; there may also be more things, perhaps, than were ever dreamt of in philosophy itself….

All this wants a book; we feel we cannot do justice to our theme in the space allotted to us. But we will now pass on to a very remarkable quatrain, No. 40 of century x., though we should have liked to place before the reader quatrain 49 of century ix., which contains perhaps the only prophecy of our author that has attained any real publicity in England, viz.:

Sénat de Londres mettront à mort leur Roy.

The number of the quatrain, 49, gives, curiously enough, the year of the occurrence in the 17th century. This may be merely accidental, and is sure to be called so, but if intended where so much is strange it would be nothing specially remarkable. We are not aware that the coincidence has ever attracted comment before, even in France. Every line of this quatrain admits of a fairly clear interpretation in our opinion, and in the Quarterly Review, vol. xxvi., the above-quoted line is allowed to be a startling announcement of Charles I.'s death; but the writer, F. Cohen (afterwards Sir F. Palgrave), says that "Oedipus himself could not give the sense of the whole verse." Of course not, if Oedipus be in so great a hurry that he will not give himself time enough to read the riddle that has been clothed under a form more or less obscure, for solid reasons afore thought.

Let us now revert to our specimen, No. 40 of century x.:

Le jeune nay au règne Britannique,
Qu'aura le père mourant recommandé,Jceluy mort Lonole donra topique,Et à son fils le règne demandé.

The new-born Prince of the kingdom of Britain, whose dying father will have recommended him, this one being dead, Lonole will perorate and snatch the kingdom from his very son.

James the First of England and Sixth of Scotland was born June 19, 1566—the year of the publication of the Quatrains—the son of Mary Stuart and Henry, Lord Darnley, who had commended the child to the Scottish lords before his assassination by Boswell. In 1603 he mounted the throne of England, and it was under him that England and Scotland were first denominated Great Britain. This conveys a great propriety to the words selected by Nostradamus. When this king dies Lonole is to seduce England with artificial rhetoric, and to demand the kingdom, together with the life of his son, Charles I.

For Lonole Garencières reads Londres, but the texte type has Lonole. It is rather curious that Lonole should yield the anagram Olleon … as Napoleon does that of … Apollyon. Cromwell and he show numerous points of contact, whether we seek them in history, character, or prophecy. But a further anagram, still more startling, has hitherto we believe escaped all the commentators: Ole Noll in the form of Old Noll, has always been the nickname of the Protector, and Ole Nol is letter for letter Lonole. It may stand for Apollyon also, and as such for "Old Nick" too.

James I. was born June 19, 1566, and thirteen days later, July 2, 1566, Nostradamus breathed his last. This quatrain, once understood, is one of the clearest and most extraordinary of the forecasts of Nostradamus. Quatrain 80, of century iii., contains a remarkable announcement of the overthrow of Charles I., the sacrifice of Strafford, and the bastard kingship of Cromwell. Century viii., quatrain 76, points very clearly to Cromwell, and is interesting; but we must pass it by, together with much more that appears to have relation to English affairs, including the very clear prophecy that England is to command the sea for 300 years (century x., 100), a period that ran out two years since, if we date the commencement of English supremacy from the defeat of the Spanish Armada, 1588.

We can only treat of three more quatrains, two of which marvellously point to Louis XVI., and the third to Napoleon as unmistakably. We may here and there glance at some striking line in passing, if only to indicate the rich mine that might be worked, did time and space permit. Pregnant hints abound, such as this (century iii., quatrain 59):

Barbare empire par le tiers usurpé.

What could better foreshadow the assault made upon government and good order in 1789, when the third estate swallowed up the other two by usurpation? Here is another graphic distich (century i., quatrain 57):

Bouche sanglante dans le sang nagera,
Au sol la face ointe de laict et miel.

The bleeding mouth swims in a tide of blood,
The face anoint drops to the crimson'd turf.

The milk and honey, wine and oil, is clearly allusive to the oil of la sainte ampoule, with which the kings of France were consecrated and anointed at Reims. But we will confine ourselves to one difficult quatrain (century ix., quatrain 20), and endeavour by means of a close examination to establish its intelligibility.

De nuict viendra par la forest de Reines
Deux pars, vaultorte, Herne la pierre blanche,
Le moyne noir en gris dedans Varennes,
Esleu Cap. cause tempeste, feu, sang, tranche.

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.

The bewildered reader may perhaps exclaim, "Surely gibberish can no further go." Well, now, let us see. The Forest of Reines is on the way to Varennes; we place in italics the two latter syllables, for they appear to constitute a variant of the same word. Herne is the anagram of Reine by metaplasm of h for i. The reader will see by referring to the "Dict. de Trévoux," article "Anagramme," that this is permissible by the structural rules of the anagram. Vaultorte is an obsolete word for face-about, as we have translated it. Deux pars stands for husband and wife. The queen is Marie Antoinette. Le moyne noir en gris is Louis XVI.; and the subject of the stanza is obviously the famous flight of the king and queen from Paris on June 20, 1791, which terminated in their arrest at Varennes, and their re-entry as captives into Paris. There are fourteen pages octavo, in small print, giving details of this tragical journey, in the Marquis de Bouillés Mémoires, full of interesting particulars admirably narrated by that grand and gallant soldier. Had Bouillé found a Turgot to co-operate with him, instead of the egotistic and irresolute Lafayette, the whole of the affairs of Europe might have taken a very different channel. His memoirs disclose him to have been a great patriot, but scarcely ever is his name now breathed. It is a book to read if you desire to know the period and to study the fate of the French king. Prudhomme (Révol. de Paris), if referred to, will establish the singular propriety of the expression vaultorte to describe the king's irresolution at the divergence of the cross roads—taking, contrary to previous arrangement, the way to Varennes. Prudhomme further relates at the above passage that the king was on this occasion attired in gray; he had on an irongray coat (gris de fer), and wore a round slouch-hat that hid the face, so that he would appear a good deal like a Franciscan (Le moyne noir en gris). The queen was dressed in white, and Madame Campan, in her Mémoires de Marie Antoinette, relates that after the arrest the queen's hair grew white in a single night, and that she had a lock of this white hair mounted in a ring for the Princesse de Lamballe, inscribed "blanchis par le malheur." She was, like Niobe, turned to white stone—la pierre blanche indeed. Esleu Cap. involves a propriety most peculiar, which demands a slight insistence, lest it be overlooked. The title of King of the French, instead of King of France, had been established since October 16, 1789. But it was not until Sept. 1, following the above arrest, that the decree was passed forcing the king to surrender to the will of the people and become a constitutional monarch. This he submitted to and signed on Sept. 14, and thus he became Esleu Cap. Finally, the word tranche is most expressive for the slice, or what is now called the couperet of the guillotine. Thus painfully disentangled by us, the gibberish has grown quite fearfully intelligible, and one or two of the words become so singularly select, and so pregnant with meaning, as to suggest pages of history in the condensation of a syllable. Here again we find a dark record flashing upon us with all the certainty of an eyewitness, and we find it to have been unmistakably in type more than 200 years before the realisation took place.

The next we cite is even still more astonishing. After troublesome investigation, it enables us to lift the veil and clear away the multiform obscurities that the indolent have heretofore presumed to be but the empty jargon of a fortune-teller.

Le part soluz, mary sera mitré
Retour: conflict passera sur le thuille,
Par cinq cents: un trahyr sera tiltré
Narbon: et Saulce par couteaux avons d'huille.
(Century ix., quatrain 34.)

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, Narbonne, and (the other) Saulce, grandfather, oilman, will (hand him over) to the soldiery.

This has to be filled in as follows: Louis XVI., now alone, that is to say, without his wife, will suffer the indignity of being crowned with the red cap of Liberty. A revival this was of the Phrygian bonnet or head-gear of the priests of Mithras, hence the word mitré. The 500 Marseillais brought from the southern city attack the Tuileries. The titled traitor is the Count de Narbonne, the minister of war. The other name, glimmering suddenly out of the obscurity, as a star through the storm-wrack of a dark night, is that of Saulce (father, son and grandson) the elder, tradesman of Varennes, chandler, grocer, oilman. The elder was procureur-syndic of his commune. This man betrayed the king to the populace, so that he was arrested par couteaux by the guards. Some read this, per custodes; or it may mean coustiller, armed with a coustille, a short straight cutlass. Avons is the old French for grandfather, avus.

Madame Campan gives an account of their majesties alighting at this grocery-shop of the Mayor of Varennes, Saulce, who could, had he wished it, have saved the king. But this false-weight parody of classic heroism, in reply to the tears of the queen, striking an attitude, ejaculated, "J'aime mon roi, mais je resterai fidèle à ma patrie." For this the assembly voted him, some two months later, 20,000 livres, and, with these two scintillations illuminating him, Saulce quits distinction and the public eye for ever. Un Brute Francais, qui aime César bien, mais plus encore le sang.

Thiers, in his account of the attack on the Tuileries, June 20, 1792 (Révol. France) draws a pathetic picture of the afflicted king (mary mitré) in his sad day-dream and red night-cap. The palace, of which he was no longer master, was evacuated about seven in the evening by the populace peaceably and in good order. Then the king, the queen, his sister, and the children, all met together, shedding a torrent of tears. The king seemed stunned by what had occurred, and now for the first time noticed that the red cap was still upon his head: he seized it and flung it aside with indignation.

Carlyle, in his French Revolution, speaks of Barbaroux's "six hundred Marsellese who know how to die," and a few lines lower down he calls them "517 able men." Now Thiers says (Révol. France), they arrived on June 30, 1792, and were five hundred men (Ils étaient cinq cent") We indicate this for the benefit of such as desire to find Nostradamus wrong, and we care nothing for Nostradamus, we only wish to find out what is right. Those who like to examine the conduct of the Count de Narbonne, we refer to Bertrand de Molleville's "Hist, de la Révolution."

We think this quatrain might lie dormant for centuries after realisation—in fact, it practically has done so, since 1792 is little short now of its centenary. It necessarily slept for more than 200 years before the event; for, who could tell anything about the chance rocket Saulce before it had risen parabolically and fallen back again? Or who could impart meaning to the part soluz, to the mysterious 500, or the titled Narbonne? Six miraculous historical details lay perdus till time in two centuries should localise them, and, a hundred years after that, ingenuity should bring them to light. That is a patient way of prophesying, if you think about it. If a knave were at work, his short wisdom would seek a nimbler return than 300 years would give him. "Now or never" is his maxim; a knave knows he is quite a fool at long wisdom.

The thing is so crowded with compressed interest that we have even now omitted a marvellous item: conflict passera sur le thuille. When Nostradamus wrote this in 1555, or earlier, the Tuileries site was occupied by extensive tilekilns, whence the renowned name sprang. Catherine de Médicis began the palace there in 1564. Ten years before the mason had laid the first stone our prophet is writing about it as a place to be stormed by a Marseilles mob two centuries later.

Multiplying pages warn us that we must soon have done, not for want of matter, for that might fill volumes with ample interest, though possibly less intense than what we now pick out; but space will fail us, for a review can only shadow forth a work, not convey one.

Napoleon said he would have a page of history all to himself, and it is true, like a great deal else that he said, though it proceed from the mouth of the greatest falsifier that ever existed. Should anybody think this too plain spoken, let him suspend condemnation until he has read Kléber's letter, Napoleon's counter statement, and Lanfrey's comments on them both. The two first are given in full in the nine-volume edition of the Mémoires of Napoleon dictated by himself. Well, he has a page of history all to himself, and a precious figure he cuts in it; yet in historical proportion, as it is meet and right it should be, he has a good many quatrains in Nostradamus "all to himself;" for the reason above named we propose to give but one:

De soldat simple parviendra en empire,
De robbe courte parviendra à la longue:
Vaillant aux armes, en église où plus pire,
Vexer les prestres comme l'eau fait l'esponge.

From a simple soldier he will rise to empire,
From a short robe he will attain the long;
Able in war, he shows to less advantage in Church government,
He vexes the priesthood like water in a sponge.

The French universally explain this of Napoleon, and it fits him very well. But so analogous are the lives and career of Napoleon and Cromwell that it might be applied to Cromwell, and Garencières does so apply it. Napoleon was plain lieutenant in 1785, consul for life in 1799, emperor from 1804 to 1814. The short robe and long are by Le Pelletier understood to be the consular robe and the imperial. The broader interpretation is perhaps the better: the girt-up military garb of action as contrasted with the long imperial robe, typical of order, leisure and direction. We should observe here that Nostradamus does not say parviendra à régner, ascendra sur le trône, but with felicity chooses the very word that will convey the hint required; kingship is over, but an empire is begun. He is valiant in arms, but something out of his depth in theology and church government: witness his ridiculous catechism, where schoolboys were taught to love, respect, and obey the emperor—that to serve the emperor was to honour and serve God himself ("il est devenu Point du Seigneur"). Lanfrey remarks here that he makes God useful as gendarme. This is as ridiculous as his ideas were upon literature. He once wrote to Cretel, "de faire faire à Paris des chansons" to rouse enthusiasm, as the claque at a theatre would. Risum teneatisl? When he said to Goëthe, "Vous êtes un homme," how truly might not the poet have rejoined "Vraiment! c'est ce que vous n'êtes pas, Sire." Fancy Burns receiving an order from the Home Office to write "Bannockburn," and send it back by return on a halfpenny post-card. It would not have resulted in "Do or die"—the sole alternative being to die, and not to do it.

But, though far from successful in ecclesiastical direction, he thoroughly vexes the priesthood, penetrating into every hole and corner, as water does into a sponge.

In century i., quatrain 88, we get a wonderful passage. Nostradamus says, Le divin mal surprendra le grand Prince a little before his marriage. We take this to mean the Austrian marriage, which was preceded by the divorce of Josephine. His prop and credit, it runs on, shall fall into a sudden weakness and then comes this tremendous sentence:

Conseil mourra pour la teste rasée.

Counsel shall perish from this shaven poll.

Garencières (who was a doctor, and admitted of our College of Physicians, then in Warwick Lane, or in the original stone house of Knightrider Street before that) could have, of course, no conception of the historical fulfilment, but he renders le divin mal as "the falling sickness, called by the Greeks epilepsia, and by the Latins morbus sacer." Nobody else, perhaps, has rendered it "epilepsy," but, thus put, the forecast becomes miraculous. It is a point to rewrite history upon, for history has failed to see this great fact. Herod was smitten, rejoicing to be called a god. Napoleon the same in his concocted catechism.

Napoleon, Cromwell, Mahomet, Caesar, and probably Alexander, were all epileptic. The moral crime, and the blasphemous egotism of this idolator de mon étoile, have now convulsed the mighty Leyden jar, or electric battery, of this brain and demon-force that has so mercilessly dealt torpedo shocks to Europe. The Corsican cerebral pap is a weakened centre now; the inner prop is gone; phantasms huger than ever visit the big brain, which itself is readier than ever to entertain them, but with a terribly diminished power of bringing them to any practical evolution. The demigod is turning fast to Byron's "little Pagod," Be these predestinations or not, in the theological sense of the word, here was the sentence of le divin mal quietly jotted down in Salon de Craux, and recorded two hundred and fifty years before against the name of the epileptic bandit of Corsica Apollyon—or Napoleon, for those who like the recent form better.

This brings us to the end, not of what has to be said, but

of the space to say it in, and there is no room left to give the life of our seer, nor to vindicate him from the baseless charges of imposture that, from the issue of his first almanac till now, have from time to time been hurled at him. Whether a vindication be now needed or not, after the little we have here exhibited, is a question. Probably it is, for folly dies hard, but that will be seen later on. We have no theory about this man, we leave it to better hands to supply one. What we do say is: here are facts so far as we can, after no stint of drudgery, either see or arrive at them, and there are thousands more producible as startling as these—very many more, less so, but still inexplicable. These very facts, first of all, we hope to see disputed, or better interpreted, for we feel sure, from the trouble we have taken already, that wider research will only end in establishing our oracle the more by giving data that may help to open up the Quatrains whose sense is latent still.