Note 117 — Chapter I

It is still a common practice in Persia and India when a child is born—especially a son—for an astrologer to be employed to “cast his horoscope” and thereby foretell the child’s career in life. “In 1670 the passion for horoscopes and expounding the stars prevailed in France among persons of the first rank. The new-born child was usually presented naked to the astrologer, who read the first lineaments in its forehead and the transverse lines in its hands, and thence wrote down its future destiny. Catherine de Medicis brought Henry IV, then a child, to old Nostradamus, whom antiquaries esteem more for his Chronicle of Provence than for his vaticinating powers. The sight of the reverend seer, with a beard which ‘streamed like a meteor in the air,’ terrified the future hero, who dreaded a whipping from so grave a personage. Will it be credited that, one of these magicians having assured Charles IX that he should live as many days as he should turn about on his heel in an hour, standing on one leg, his majesty every morning performed that solemn exercise for an hour, the principal officers of the court, the judges, the chancellors, and the generals likewise, in compliment standing on one leg and turning round!”—Demonologia, by J. S. F.