rrounded the princes of
Christendom and were more especially welcomed and protected in France by
Catherine de' Medici. In the nativity drawn by Basilio and Ruggiero the
elder, the principal events of Catherine's life were foretold with a
correctness which is quite disheartening for those who deny the power
of occult science. This horoscope predicted the misfortunes which during
the siege of Florence imperilled the beginning of her life; also her
marriage with a son of the king of France, the unexpected succession
of that son to his father's throne, the birth of her children,
their number, and the fact that three of her sons would be kings in
succession, that two of her daughters would be queens, and that all
of them were destined to die without posterity. This prediction was so
fully realized that many historians have assumed that it was written
after the events.

It is well known that Nostradamus took to the chateau de Chaumont,
whither Catherine went after the conspiracy of La Renaudie, a woman who
possessed the faculty of reading the future. Now, during the reign of
Francois II., while the queen had with her her four sons, all young and
in good health, and before the marriage of her daughter Elizabeth with
Philip II., king of Spain, or that of her daughter Marguerite with Henri
de Bourbon, king of Navarre (afterward Henri IV.), Nostradamus and this
woman reiterated the circumstances formerly predicted in the famous
nativity. This woman, who was no doubt gifted with second sight, and who
belonged to the great school of Seekers of the Great Work, though the
particulars of her life and name are lost to history, stated that the
last crowned child would be assassinated. Having placed the queen-mother
in front of a magic mirror, in which was reflected a wheel on the
several spokes of which were the faces of her children, the sorceress
set the wheel revolving, and Catherine counted the number of revolutions
which it made. Each revolution was for each son one year of his reign.
Henri IV. was also put upon the wheel, which then made twenty-four
rounds, and the woman (some historians have said it was a man) told the
frightened queen that Henri de Bourbon would be king of France and reign
that number of years. From that time forth Catherine de' Medici vowed
a mortal hatred to the man whom she knew would succeed the last of her
Valois sons, who was to die assassinated. Anxious to know what her own
death would be, she was warned