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.

These predictions, which were known to the Cardinal de Lorraine,
who regarded them as witchcraft, were now in process of realization.
Francois II. had reigned his two revolutions of the wheel, and Charles
IX. was now making his last turn. If Catherine said the strange words
which history has attributed to her when her son Henri started for
Poland,--"You will soon return,"--they must be set down to her faith in
occult science and not to the intention of poisoning Charles IX.

Many other circumstances corroborated Catherine's faith in the occult
sciences. The night before the tournament at which Henri II. was killed,
Catherine saw the fatal blow in a dream. Her astrological council, then
composed of Nostradamus and the two Ruggieri, had already predicted
to her the death of the king. History has recorded the efforts made
by Catherine to persuade her husband not to enter the lists. The
prognostic, and the dream produced by the prognostic, were verified. The
memoirs of the day relate another fact that was no less singular. The
courier who announced the victory of Moncontour arrived in the
night, after riding with such speed that he killed three horses. The
queen-mother was awakened to receive the news, to which she replied,
"I knew it already." In fact, as Brantome relates, she had told of her
son's triumph the evening before, and narrated several circumstances of
the battle. The astrologer of the house of Bourbon predicted that the
youngest of all the princes descended from Saint-Louis (the son of
Antoine de Bourbon) would ascend the throne of France. This prediction,
related by Sully, was accomplished in the precise terms of the
horoscope; which led Henri IV. to say that by dint of lying these people
sometimes hit the truth. However