Catherine De Medici eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 406 pages of information about Catherine De Medici.

Catherine De Medici eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 406 pages of information about Catherine De Medici.
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 to beware of Saint-Germain.  Supposing, therefore, that she would be either put to death or imprisoned in the chateau de Saint-Germain, she would never so much as put her foot there, although that residence was far more convenient for her political plans, owing to its proximity to Paris, than the other castles to which she retreated with the king during the troubles.  When she was taken suddenly ill, a few days after the murder of the Duc de Guise at Blois, she asked the name of the bishop who came to assist her.  Being told it was Saint-Germain, she cried out, “I am dead!” and did actually die on the morrow,—­having, moreover, lived the exact number of years given to her by all her horoscopes.

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Catherine De Medici from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.