For the third and last time the King received the farrier of Salon.
The courtiers displayed so much curiosity in this visionary that he had to be shut up in the monastery of Des Rècollets. There the little Princess of Savoy, who was shortly to marry the Duke of Burgundy, came to see him with several lords and ladies of the court.
He appeared slow to speak, good, simple, and humble. The King ordered him to be furnished with a fine horse, clothes, and money; then he sent him back to Provence.
Public opinion was divided on the subject of the apparition which had appeared to the farrier and the mission he had received from it. Most people believed that he had seen the spirit of Marie-Thérèse; but some said it was Nostradamus.[1164]
It was only at Salon, where he slept in the church of the Franciscans, that this astrologer was absolutely believed in. His "Centuries," which appeared at Paris and at Lyon in no less than ten editions in the course of one century, entertained the credulous throughout the kingdom. In 1693, there had just been published a book of the prophecies of Nostradamus showing how they had been fulfilled in history from the reign of Henry II down to that of Louis the Great.
It came to be believed that in the following mysterious quatrain the farrier's coming had been prophesied:
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"Le penultiesme du surnom du Prophète, Prendra Diane pour son iour et repos: Loing vaguera par frénétique teste, En délivrant un grand peuple d'impos."[1165] |
An attempt was made to apply these obscure lines to the poor prophet of Salon. In the first line he is said to figure as one of the twelve minor prophets, Micah, which name is closely allied to Michel. In the second line Diane was said to be the mother of the farrier, who was certainly called by that name. But if the line means anything at all, it is more likely to refer to the day of the moon, Monday. It was carefully pointed out that in the third line frénétique means not mad but inspired. The fourth and only intelligible line would suggest that the spectre bade Michel ask the King to lessen the taxes and dues which then weighed so heavily on the good folk of town and country:
En délivrant un grand peuple d'impos. This was enough to make the farrier popular and to cause those unhappy sufferers to centre in this poor windbag their hopes for a better future. His portrait was engraved in copper-plate, and below it was written the quatrain of Nostradamus. M. d'Argenson,[1166] who was at the head of the police department, had these portraits seized. They were suppressed, so says the Gazette d'Amsterdam, on account of the last line of the quatrain written beneath the portrait, the line which runs: En délivrant un grand peuple d'impos. Such an expression was hardly likely to please the court.
No one ever knew exactly what was the mission the farrier received from his spectre. Subtle folk suspected one of Madame de Maintenon's intrigues. She had a friend at Marseille, a Madame Arnoul, who was as ugly as sin, it was said, and yet who managed to make men fall in love with her. They thought that this Madame Arnoul had shown Marie-Thérèse to the good man of Salon in order to induce the King to live honourably with widow Scarron. But in 1697 widow Scarron had been married to Louis for twelve years at least; and one cannot see why ghostly aid should have been necessary to attach the old King to her.