A PROPHECY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVI, Issue 11, 6 July 1888, Page 15

A PROPHECY.

(Paris correspondence of the Nation.} " Undhk which King, Beaonian V and how long will this agitation last f you may aak me ; and what will be the upshot of it all 1 Ah ! here I confess my inability to reply, not being in the vaticinating line, bat there was published two years ago in a Brussels newspaper a •ingular prophecy of the sixteenth century. Tv dois verre et mourir 0 Gaule, soubz trois 80. Deuxsiecles poubz 80. 1., tubautseras O Gaule, Tn, coraera 80. 11,, nires te feras lambeau. Puiß ioubz mitron 80, 111., Bis, Clem clora ton role. This ourious quatrain, after the manner of the famous Nostradamus, is thus interpreted by a student of oracles in the lnterme diaire : — By the three Bo are designated the three dynasties which were successsively to rule France. Bo 1 means evidently that of the Bourbons, which, founded by Honri IV. in 1859, "raised " (hautte) to prosperity Gaule during exactly two centuries until 1789. Bo II is quite as certainly the Bonaparte dynasty which left Corsica (oorae) with Napoleon 1., and did " increase " (ctrsera) Gaule, but, finally, in the course of its two reigns, " tore to rags " (/eras lambeau) by the invasion of the allies and the loss of Alsace Lorraine. One thing, however, erercisei the interpreter : he cannot quite make out a hemisstich in the last line, but ventures to suppose that Bis and Clem, who are to " finish up the part " (dote U rsle), indicate Bismarck »nd Clemencean, who — the first by foreign war, the second by intestine strife — will bring Gaule to ruin. He has no hesitation, though, in asserting that Boulanger is Bo 111., for what can be more luminous than his deiignation, the prefix of mitrtm— "baker"! The prophecy, yon see, so as to be precise, descends even to the me of slang I And if any of your readers be inquisitive, they can consult tbc original of this mysteriouß quatrain, which is contained in a very rare volume, at the Bibliotheque Nationale. which was published by Jean Stratiuß, of Lyons, in the year MDLXXXV., and is dedicated to the " Augußt and Most Serene Monarch Frangois Polon, Roy Cesarean, thiid of the name, by his most humble Bubiect and servant, Jacques Mollar,." We shall see, in the coarse of a twelvemonth, whether the third parl of the conundrum has been read as accurately as the first two ; it is so eaiy to find concordances after proof.