THE NUN OF BLOIS, AND OTHER PROPHETS.
WE mentioned in a short note of last week the prophecy of the Nun of Blois, said to have been given in 1808, in relation, or supposed to be in relation, to the great troubles now taking place in France. At that time, we confess, we had our doubts whether the Nun's prophecy had not been written down since the war broke out and assumed its present dimensions ; but we have since read it in a little collection of prophecies, of which the third edition now before us* was published ten years ago, in 1860, so that whatever approach the good nun's prophecy may make to the event, must go, we suppose, to the credit of her prophetic powers. First of all, we ought to state that as far as we can see in the extract given from her prophecy in this pamphlet, there is no date assigned to the year of fulfilment at all. There are certain local events, mentioned in connection with the first part of her prophecy, which the editor states really took place in Blois in 1848, and which convinced the good people of Blois that she was a true prophet, and that much greater troubles,—the ' grands malheurs,' par excellence,—which she predicted for some future time (apparently not dated) would really take place. However this may be,—and it is a point worth notice that prophecies very rarely indeed date themselves by the year, preferring usually to assign notes of time referring to phenomena, like those of the seasons, for instance, visible to the eye, as if they spoke from vision,—the Nun of Blois goes on to assign as the time of year when the "great calamities" are to overtake France, an ecclesiastical occasion which her editor (who published his comment, as we said, ten years ago) declares to mean after the first fortnight of July (apres la premiere quinzaine de Juillet). In point of fact, war was declared on the 15th July. She then goes on to assert that "the death of a great personage will be concealed for three days," a prediction which has, we imagine, hitherto failed altogether. She then predicts that "the great calamities" will all happen before the end of the vintage, and that the pedlars or travelling salesmen who attend a certain fair at Blois (which the editor of 1860 fixes as the fair of August 23) will be so anxious about the state of things at their own houses, that they will make haste to pack up and be off from Blois. On August 23 it will be remembered that the great battles before Metz had all taken place some three or four days, the last battle of Gravelotte having occurred on August 18, and Bazaine being already effectually shut up in Metz ; indeed, MacIlahon had on, the previous day begun his march from Chalons, and the whole attitude of France was one of the deepest anxiety. The nun goes on to say how terrible the calamities of France will be. "Nevertheless," she says, "they will not extend to the whole of France, but only to some great cities, and, most of all, to the capital, where there will be a terrible conflict, and the massacre will be great." The "great calamities" have certainly extended far beyond the great cities already. "Blois will not have any of it. The priests and the religious women will be in a great fright. The bishop will absent himself and go to a chateau. Some priests will hide themselves. The churches will be shut, but for so short a time that one will hardly be aware of it ; indeed, this will only have reference to a period of twenty-four hours." " You yourselves," she says to the • L'Avenir : Revelations tar rEilliee et la Re'volution. 3me. Edition, consider- ablement angmentee. Bruxelles U. Goemaere. Mars, 1800. nuns of the Ursuline convent, "will be on the point of going away, but the first who shall put her foot on the threshold will ay, Let us go in again,' and you will go in. There will be great need of prayer, for the wicked would wish to destroy everything, but they will not have time. They will all perish in the great fight. Many good will perish also, for they will make all the men go out to the fight, and only the old men will remain." The call for all the male population able to bear arms has already been made. The nun adds that "the last [those summoned last] will not go far ; they will not go more than three days' march" from Blois,—say, to the Army of the Loire, now encamped somewhere between Bourges and Blois. "The time will be short. It will be the women who will prepare the vintage, and the men will return in time to finish it, because all will be over." It must be admitted the good nun seems to have been very wide of the mark here, unless, indeed, Paris falls, and the Army of the Loire is again defeated; and peace is made within the next week or so, in which case all may be over almost as soon as she predicted. "During all this time the true news will not be known except by private letters. At last three couriers will come. The first will announce that all is lost. The second, who will arrive in the night, will only meet one man in the streets, who, as he leans against his door, will look at him and say, 'You are hot, my friend, dismount, and take a glass of wine,' to which the other will reply, 'I am in too great a hurry,' and will explain that another courier ought soon to arrive and bring good news. Then he will con- tinue his route towards the Berry,"—the Berry is the district of France in which Bourges lies ; in other words, this courier is supposed to be going towards the head-quarters of the present Loire Army. "You will be praying towards six in the morning, when you will hear it said that two couriers have passed, and then there will arrive the third, fire and water, who will be due at Tours at seven o'clock, and who will bring the good news (et alors arrivera le troisieme, feu et eau, qui devra etre a Tours It sept heures, et qui apportera la bonne nouvelle)." "Note," says the editor of 1860, "that the courier fire and water, i.e., the railway, is thus announced long before any one dreamt of it in France" (the prophecy, as we have said, is ascribed to the year 1808). The curious point here is the reference to Tours (where the French Government is now established) as the end of this railway-courier's journey,—who is to arrive at Blois at six in the morning, and be due at Tours at seven,—the distance being about thirty-five miles, or an hour's express journey. "Then a Te Deuni will be sung,—yes, indeed, a Te Down, but such a Te Deum as has never before been sung. But it won't be he who is expected who will reign, i.e., who will reign at first ; it will be the Saviour granted to France on whom France did not count. The Prince will not be there. They will go and fetch him. Nevertheless, quiet will re-appear, and from the moment when the Prince remounts the throne, France will enjoy a perfect peace, and will be more flourishing and more tranquil than ever for about twenty years."
Such is the drift of this curious little bit of prophecy, which seems like most of the few prophecies of all time which can be said to have gone at all near the mark, rather to have come within the white circle than to have hit the bull's. eye. It can hardly at best turn out as successful as the prophecy that the Empress Josephine would become something higher than a queen, and would die in a hospital,—a prophecy asserted by Alison to have been recorded by himself before the event had verified it. As far as we can see, the prophecy of the Nun of Blois is likely to be falsified in a good .many most important particulars, especially as to the shortness of the duration of the great troubles, and the Saviour accorded to France, who is to rescue her from ruin before the vintage is over ; but grant that it fails in these respects, there is still sufficient cause for amused wonder at the exactness with which it dates the beginning of the great troubles at a season declared by the editor of 1860 as indicating the end of the first fortnight in July, and with which it specifies a time, declared by the same editor of ten years ago to mean the 23rd August, as a moment of great anxiety for the travelling salesmen who came to Blois,—of course, mainly from Paris,—with which it indicates the directions of Bourges and Tours, as the places to which couriers with news, towards the end of the disastrous autumn, will be sent in hot haste. A few months ago even, there could hardly have been any suspicion in anybody's mind that messengers to the Berry and to Tours would be rushing through Blois in any time of calamity, only dropping their news in Blois by the way because it happened to lie in the line of their route.
Another prophecy quoted in the same pamphlet (of date 1860) prophesies, along with much that seems highly improbable, the loss of his empire by Napoleon, and the destruction of Paris. "The Pope," it said, "shall be at that time driven out of Rome and he shall be restored by Napoleon. The latter will be Emperor, but his empire shall not be long, for when he shall com- mence afflicting the Pope and the children of Judah, then God shall send arrows of fire against him and his. But before all there will be a war of the French and English against the Russians to defend the empire of the Turks ; nevertheless, the Russians will lose the first war, but there will be a second war in which the Russians will take Constantinople and the Austrians Jerusalem. Then the Russians will encamp in Piedmont, and King Victor Emanuel will have lost the kingdom and will be a Russian General. Some sovereigns (des souverains) invade France, which is desolated by civil war, but they will not get to Paris till it is already destroyed by fire. Before that there will be in Paris famine, pestilence, and civil war. Then Henry V. will be King of France, and he will leave the isle of captivity. After that England will turn Catholic, and also two sovereigns of Germany." Here is an odd enough medley of fiction, or at least violent impro- bability and of actual fact, the violent improbabilities seeming to be spoken of as of about the same date as the facts. The restoration of the Pope by Napoleon, and the Crimean war, may very likely have been known at the time of the prophecy, and be a mere use of history in the interests of prophecy ; but the fall of Napoleon when he begins to afflict the Pope and the good Catholics, was a hazardous prophecy in 1860, and still more in 1857, the date at which the editor of the pamphlet asserts that he received the prophecy. Whether the withdrawal of the occupying army from Rome, and the protest against the procla- mation of the dogma of infallibility, can fairly be called " afflict- ing " the Pope half so fairly as what occurred in 1860 when the Emperor concurred in Cavour's seizure of the States of the Church, is doubtful, so that the "arrows of fire" seem to have made some ten years' delay. On the whole, there is a good deal more of false than true in this prediction, since nothing physically pos- sible seems nearer impossibility at present than the transforma- tion of Victor Emanuel into a Russian General, and a Russian invasion of Italy following the capture of Constantinople. At all events, the invasion of France by "some kings" and the catastrophe to Paris have happened a little too soon for the lucidity of the prophet's historical arrangement, and it may perhaps be fair to treat the prophecy as a grotesque mixture of happy and unhappy surmises.
But the truth is, that this mixture, if not of truth and falsehood, at least of what can be verified and what cannot be verified, is a characteristic, as far as we can see, of almost all prophecy, if we except the prophecies of our Lord with regard to the destruc- tion of Jerusalem and his own crucifixion. No one has ever yet made anything very clear of the predictions of the Old Testament. They are clearly much more of the nature of foreshadowings than predictions,—of profound spiritual desires anticipating their own fulfilments than of clear historical anticipations. Almost all prediction in all times,—beginning with the Book of Revelation, —is expressed in language admitting of a good many shades of meaning, and whenever we get very clear statements, like that of the Nun of Blois as to the three messengers, and the great per- sonage whose death was to be three days concealed, or tliis last prophecy as to the fall of Napoleon, the destruction of Paris, and the transformation of Victor Emanuel into a Russian General, there is pretty sure to be as much error as truth.
It is a curious question whether the truth in prediction has ever been sufficient to render the hypothesis of mere coincidence untenable, and to render it needful to suppose some foreseeing faculty unconnected with divine inspiration. That divine in- spiration could mix up truth and falsehood in this strange medley is of course absolutely impossible, nor does it seem reasonable to suppose that if the truth only were inspired for the purpose of prediction, the human alloy of falsehood would be permitted to cling round it and discredit it. Suppose, for example, the old Lehnin prophecy, said to date from the thirteenth century, and interpreted to mean that the Brandenburg-Hohenzollern dynasty will end with the present Hohenzollern, when Germany is to "receive its King," were to come true,—which is, of course, exceedingly improbable, considering the Crown Prince and his young family, —would it be rational to suppose it a happy guess because there is much connected with it which is false ? Is it indeed quite rational to suppose that the prediction as to Josephinet
t See Alison's "History of France," second edition, vol. III., p. 19. "It had early been prophesied by a negress that site (Josephine) should lose her first husband, be extremely unfortunate, but that she should afterwards be greater than a queen. This prophecy, the authenticity of which is placed beyond a doubt, was fulfilled in the most singular manner." And Mr. Alison adds in a note, "The author heard this prophecy long before Napoleon's elevation to the throne, from the late Countess of Bath and the Countess of Ancrum, who were educated in the same convent with attested by Alison before it was fulfilled was a happy-guess ? We think not,—and mysterious as such a gift seems, are disposed to think that some partial power of prediction may be .like the rare power of thought-reading, which was lately explained by "brain- waves ") one of the exceptional indications of undegeloped facul- ties, which may either take a further development ili the future of our race on earth, or may be reserved for developrgent beyond the grave.
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