"False frail brute " is not a polite phrase,
or—in reference to her ancient unsteadiness—
we would forthwith hand over this prophecy to
Venice.

Should a mermaid be cast ashore near
Portsmouth, it will behove us to complete our sea-
defences:

When the fish, both terrestrial and aquatic,
By a strong wave shall be cast upon the sand,
With her strange, fearful, sweet, horrid form,
Soon the enemies will come near to the walls by the
    sea.

But now we come to a very remarkable fit
indeed, and one that might well, as his biographer
asserts, have put our author in credit, as
well for its unusual clearness as for the true
event of it. It will be better to quote the
original French:

De lion jeune le vieux surmontera
En champs bellique par singulier duelle,
Dans cage d'or; l'Å“il il lui crevera
Deux playes une fois mourir mort cruelle.

The young lion shall overcome the old one
In martial field by a single duel,
In a golden cage he shall put out his eye,
Two wounds from one; then he shall die a cruel
   death.

Four years subsequent to the promulgation of
this prophecy—namely, on the last day of June,
fifteen hundred and fifty-nine—Henry the
Second of France received his mortal hurt at
the tournament given in honour of his daughter's
marriage with Philip of Spain. The king's
party had won the honours of the day, and the
sports were drawing to a close, when the
martial prince determined to break one lance more,
and, unable to find a worthy antagonist, sent for
a noble young captain of his Scottish Guard
Gabriel de Lorges, Count de Montgomeri—and
ordered him to tilt against him. The young
count refused, but—the king growing angry—
he was constrained to obey. In the shock that
ensued, De Lorges's lance caught the lower part
of the king's gilded helmet, "cage d'or," and,
the point breaking away, the splintered stump
struck Henry's bowed head above the right eye.
Glancing thence, it entered deep below the eye,
inflicting a second wound, which in ten days
proved mortal. Thus was realised the singular
expression, "two wounds from one."

It has been affirmed that Henry's death "in
a duel" was also foretold, though without
circumstance, by Luke Gauric, the astrologer
of Gifoni. According, however, to better authority,
that excellent non-seer predicted for the
king a very long life, whereas he died at forty.

Gauric tried another tack with the tyrant
Bentivoglio, of Bologna, to whom he promised
dethronement and exile. The affronted prince
ordered him to be hung by one arm from a lofty
beam, and let fall—a process he endured several
times without complaint, and, it was said, without
injury.

The poet Boccalini, however, represents him,
in his Raguagli di Parnasso, as demanding
justice of Apollo for such maltreatment. The
deity calmly responds that, if his art enabled
him to foresee Bentivoglio's mishaps, he might
have foretold his own. Furthermore, that it was
"une grande sottise"—a great absurdity—to
predict to any sovereign circumstances less
gratifying than those which usually form the
staple of court prophecy.

We have had a fit of Nostradamus. Anon, a
misfit.

Gassendi relates that, in sixteen hundred and
thirty-eight, Suffren, judge of Salon, placed
before him the horoscope of his father, Antoine
Suffren, in the handwriting of Nostradamus
himself. Upon a careful comparison of the
prophecy with the event, Gassendi found them
in absolute and undeviating contradiction.

The prophet foretold that Suffren would wear
a long curling beard: he was always close
shaven. That his teeth would be black and
irregular: they were white, sound, and even.
That, in old age, he would be bent double:
he went, straight, to his grave. That, at
nineteen, he would inherit an unexpected
fortune: he had none but what his father
bequeathed him. That he would devote himself
to occult philosophy, geometry, arithmetic, and
eloquence: he studied nothing but
jurisprudence, and knew but little of that. As a
final confutation of the prophet's flattering
views, this very aggravating "native" died just
twenty-one years sooner than had been predicted
for him!

The private and domestic character of many
of Nostradamus's prophecies forbids any close
verification. Something like this has been seen
in our own time:

The brother of the sister, with a fained dissimulation,
Shall mix dew with mineral,
In a cake given to a slow old woman.
She dieth tasting of. The deed shall be simple and
    country-like.

This, for all its idyllic ring, seems to have
been a case of clumsy poisoning, the poor old
lady being stigmatised as "slow," for not
succumbing to the drug with all the expedition
that had been expected of her. Hence, the
"mineral" having failed, the result was accelerated
by a poisoned cake.

Obscurity is the soul of this description of
prophecy; and here, to conclude, is a triad of
"teasers:"

  A dukedom shall be committed against Oinde,
   Of Saulne and St. Aubin and BelÅ“uvre,
   To pave with marble and of towers well-picht
   Not Bleteran to resist, and masterpiece.

If that be of doubtful purport, what of this?

  The natural to so high, high not low,
   Late return shall make the sad contented;
   The Recloing shall not be without strife
   In employing and loosing all his time.

Of which a commentator disposes, with the
supplementary prediction that no learned clerk
shall ever penetrate its meaning.