SOURCE: "Nostradamus the Astrologer," in Temple Bar, Vol. XLI, April 1874, pp. 83-92.

Besant was a prolific English novelist, historian, and critic who sought in his fiction to expose and denounce the social evils of late-Victorian England. In the following excerpt, he sarcastically denigrates Nostradamus as a prophet and his admirers for their gullibility.

It is sad to read that in his own town [Nostradamus] was always regarded, save by one favourite disciple, as an impostor of the first, and therefore most successful, order. This disciple, Jean de Chavigny, one of those simple and lovable creatures, born for the nourishment of the quack and the humbug, who will believe anything, hovered round the master like Cadijah round Mohammed. He left his native town of Beaune, where the wine is so good, and took up his residence altogether in Salon itself, so as to be always near Nostradamus, abandoning family...