Note 222 — FRENCH REVOLUTION.
Reading edition
The order is “Qu’avint oncq’ plus d’horreur ni plus pire à Babel qu’il n’adviendra aux Romains par les journaux.” This is M. le Pelletier’s reading, and he interprets it of Voltaire, the encyclopedists and journalists of the seventeenth century, who assailed the faith and the Church of Rome. But surely the one like Hannibal was Napoleon, and the journaux in this old speech does not stand for journals and newspapers that had no existence, and therefore no name in the time of Nostradamus. Journal meant a day’s work, such as could, in ploughing, be done by a man with two oxen.