Note 16 — Forecastings of Nostradamus.

The passage is cited by the Encyclopædists to bring Nostradamus into discredit, and is said to occur in the first volume of Gassendi’s “Physics.” I have no doubt it is there, but I have not thought it worth while to hunt through the six volumes folio of his collected works to ascertain the fact. Bouys in his “Nouvelles Considerations” says justly enough that the learned writers of the Encyclopædia would take the testimony of Jean-Baptiste Suffren without any hesitation as a thing not to be doubted; it would only be works that should be of the most sacred authority to everyone else that they would think of calling in question.