30 MADEMOISELLE LENORMAND. the thing, after all, had not been infallibly declared, that the question still remained, whether it There would really come to pass,' and so on. must something terrible have been said to the poor soul. "I was now ushered in, and made to sit down near the sorceress, at a table that stood by the sofa. As I had heard that, when asked only for the petit jeu (which cost two napoleons), she left out many details, in her sketch of the past, the present, and the future, I at once signified my desire to have the grand jeu, of which four napoleons is the price. "She then asked me- "1. The initial letter of my Christian name. "2. That of my surname. "3. Of my country. "4. Of the place of my birth. "5. My age-to be given with as much exactitude as was in my power: it so happened that I could state it even to the hour, and did so. "6. The name of my favorite flower. "7. The name of my favorite animal. "8. The name of the animal to which I had the greatest repugnance. tinies. She spoke very rapidly, and as if reading "Of my past history, she told me, to my infinite astonishment, much that I myself had almost forgotten, which, probably, there was no one in my own country that knew or remembered, and which most certainly was known to nobody at Paris. Among other things, she said-' You have more than once been in peril of life; in particular, within your first five years, you had a narrow escape of drowning.' Who told her that in my fourth year I fell into the great pond at Schwetzingen? 66. More than once you have been in danger of losing your life by fire.' 66 This, too, is true. "You were born in circumstances which did not offer you the prospect of high station in the world; nevertheless, you have attained it. Very early in life you began to labor for distinction of some sort; you were not yet five-and twenty when you first entered the service of the state, but it was in a very subordinate position.' "How did she find out that I received official appointment at nineteen? my first in so definite and distinct a manner, that I began to feel a kind of horror creeping over me, as if I had been in the presence of a spirit. "Upon this, she took, in addition to some seven packs of cards which already lay on the table, seven packs more, making in all fourteen packs. They were, however, of very different kinds; for "Then she proceeded to reckon up to me a instance, Tarok-cards, old German cards, whist cards, cards marked with the celestial bodies, cards multitude of particulars of my past life, in parti with necromantic figures, and I know not what all-cular placing the different sections of it before me besides. She now shuffled one pack after another, giving me each pack, after she had shuffled it, to cut. Naturally, I was going to do this with the right hand, but she prevented me, and said, To try whether 'La main gauche, monsieur.' she said this merely to mystify me, or would seriously make a point of it, I cut the second pack with the left hand, but took the right again to the third; but she interposed instantly, and repeated, La main gauche, monsieur.' Out of each pack, after cutting, I had to draw (still with the left hand) a certain number of cards, prescribed by her; not the same number out of each pack, but from one more, from another less: from the Tarok cards, for instance, twenty-five; from another pack, The cards six; from a third, ten; and so on. thus drawn she arranged in a certain order on the table all the rest were put aside. OC With respect to the last section but one (my taking office in Westphalia), she remarked, that it had not at first appeared likely to become very brilliant, but that circumstances had soon curred, which had given it such a character. "Of the present she spoke with the same accuracy. "Of the future, some things that she said were characterized by a true Sibylline obscurity, or might have been compared to that Pythian utterance, If Croesus crosses the Phasis, a great kingdom will fall.' Some things, on the other hand, she expressed in a clear and unambiguous manner, and they have proved true. them there, I knew not- but,' proceeded the sorceress, you may be tranquil on this score, for in eight days you will receive a letter, which will indeed contain various things not agreeable to you, but will relieve you of all uneasiness on your family's account.' For example, she said, You are in great anxi"She then took my left hand, and surveyed it ety about your family'-which indeed I was, for I very attentively, taking particular notice of all its knew that my wife and children had got in safety lines and intersections. After a little while, she as far as Elsen, but whether they had got happily commenced counting the lines upwards and down-to Hildesheim, and if so, how matters stood with wards, and from side to side, pronouncing at the same time the names of the heavenly bodies. At length, she opened a great necromantic book which lay near her, and in which were drawn an immense variety of hands, with all their linear marks: these drawings she compared carefully, one after another, with my hand, till she found one that was marked in a similar way. Then, turning to the cards arranged on the table, she studied them with great intentness, went from one to another, numbering and calculating very busily, till at last she began to speak, and to tell me, out of the cards before her, my past, present, and future des "In effect, by the eighth day I received a letter from my wife, which acquainted me that she and the children were well, but of which the remain. ing contents were by no means of a character to give me pleasure. "Within the next eight days I should four times successively obtain accounts of the state of things in my native country, and on one occasion] should hear very minute particulars respecting my family. "After three weeks I revisited the house of Mlle. Lenormand, but found her engaged, and heard from the little maid that, with the best will in the "This was said on the 28th of March. Two world, she had not yet been able to make out time days after, the allies entered Paris, an event the to write what I wished for; but, if I would come most unexpected to all its citizens. About six days again in four days, it should positively be ready. after, I went to walk on the Boulevards; a person "I was glad of this delay; the test, I thought, in the uniform of the Prussian artillery came ea- would be all the severer, whether she really read gerly up to me, and to my astonishment I recog- the same things in the cards, this second time, that nised Monsieur N., who had lived with us a short she did three or four weeks before, or whether she time before at Compiegne, had then returned to only recalled, by an effort of memory, what she Hildesheim, and joined the Prussians, and was had said to me on a former occasion. I therefore now come direct from Hildesheim to Paris, conse-quitted the house with pleasure, and returned after quently had no end of things to tell me about my four days. Mlle. Lenormand was gone out. The family, whom he had seen and spoken with. A little maid excused this on the score of urgent little after, I met Monsieur Delius, formerly prefect business, begged me in her mistress's name, to of Göttingen, and, in short, I really, in the course of enter the cabinet, and opening a drawer, showed eight days, had news from Germany just four times. me a paper intended for me, but which was not "She proceeded- You will not remain long in yet quite finished. I read it through, as far as it France, but will return to your own country, where went, and found that it already contained about you will at first have to encounter a host of an- two-thirds of what the sorceress had said to met noyances, some of them trifling, some grave. You orally. Errors there were none, and the little variawill be arrested, but speedily restored to liberty.' tions from what I had heard near four weeks before "All this took place here in Heidelberg. from her, were of the most inconsiderable nature. In four days more, the little maid assured me, the manuscript should, without fail, be ready. In effect it was so, and corresponded accurately with what she had spoken more than four weeks before. Yet how many nativities might she not have cast in the interval! How many men's destinies must have thrust mine out of her recollection! I went purposely, from the time of my first visit to her till my departure from Paris, into her neighborhood several times, and always found one or more carriages standing before her house, which had brought persons desirous of learning their destiny at the lips of Mlle. Lenormand." 2 "She now said very distinctly, that before the 23d of November, 1814, I should receive an important decision, but one very unacceptable to me. In effect, on the 21st of that month, I received the letter of the Hanoverian minister, Count Munster, conveying to me the determination of his government on my claim to the estate of Marienrode: the purport of this determination was, that my claim was rejected, but the appeal, which I spoke of, to the Congress of Vienna left open to me. "Your destiny,' she added, will, for the next three years, be but precarious and unstable and you will not find yourself in prosperous circumstances again until 1817.' "When she had completely finished, I wished to have the whole written down (this costs a napoleon more), as it interested me too much to allow of my trusting the retention of it solely to memory. Much,' said I, of what you have said to me, respecting my past life, has put me in no small astonishment.' "Ah replied she, drily, c'est bien fait pour cela. "She had no objection to write it all down for me, but assured me that she had more to do than could be told, and must, therefore, request of me three things. First, that I would write down for her the three answers above mentioned; secondly, that I would not require her to go into the past and the present at such length as she had done in her verbal communication; and, thirdly, that I would give her three weeks' time, before coming for the paper. That will be the easier for you to do,' said she, as you will remain two months longer at Paris. This struck me much, because, in the nosition I then occupied, and under the political rcumstances existing, I could not engage to be at raris three days. "Surement,' repeated she, as she observed my perplexed looks; vous resterez encore deux mois à Paris.' "And in this also she was right! I remained at Paris just two months longer, and no more. We offer no opinion on the above, except "True" we must that it is "curious." presume it, coming, as it does, not from a professional inditer of fugitive romance, but from a grave man, with a character to lose a man of arithmetic and red tape, and such solid realities of life-whose only flight of imagination, that we can find any trace of, was that very high, but very brief one, of accepting the office of "liquidator of the national debt." Somebody has called chiromancy a monstrum nulla virtute redemptum." It may be so; still these coincidences (to use a word without much meaning) are strange. Malchus was not the only celebrated person of the last generation whose horoscope Lenormand constructed: Talma, Madame de Stael, Mlle. George, and numerous other notabilities of that age, also had occasion to acknowledge that her predictions were not thrown out at random; and it is but a few years since the accomplishment of a prophecy of hers, respecting Horace Vernet, delivered in 1807, when he was a child. This was to the effect that he would, in about thirty years 32 MADEMOISELLE LENORMAND. 66 Tribet vowed and swore he would be the most regular, the most staid of men, and would suffer no degree of prosperity to intoxicate him; as for play, he bound himself by a solemn oath to avoid it, and to apply his gains in the lottery solely to his family's good.Well,' said Lenormand, I will tell you the numbers. I will even let you know that one of them denotes the year of your death-it is 28; another is 13, your name-festival, and a third 66, the number of your star. There is still another number, which is full of good luck for you, but-you once wounded yourself in the left hand on the stage with a pistol, while playing the part of a brigand." from that time, stand in such high considera- ed Lenormand, represented that his happiness was tion as an artist, that the king would send in her hands; that he was poor, helpless, the fahim to Africa, to paint the storming of ther of ten children, whom it was not in his power even to educate, and for whose future prospects a fortress there by the French army; a he was in despair. At last the sybil looked on prediction which was literally fulfilled in him with a grave aspect, and said, "Do not de1839. It is also asserted, as something sire to know your numbers; it is true that they generally known, that she foretold Murat will be drawn in the next tirage at Paris, but they the place and the hour of his death, twenty will bring you far greater evils than you now years before that event. People will tell have to contend with. Seduced by the first smile us, these were all "coincidences;" which of fortune, you will become a passionate gambler; you will neglect your art, renounce, in your elated means, if it means anything, that the event folly, the profession that insures you bread, aban"coincided" with the prediction. Quite don your wife and your children, play again, and true; the event did coincide with the pre-again play, and not cease playing, until, beggared, diction, and here is just the wonder. If maddened, and lost irretrievably, you will only there had been no "coincidence"—that is, hasten, by suicide, a death already creeping if the prophecy had not been fulfilled-there towards you by starvation.' would have been no mystery in the case. But the certainty with which Lenormand divined the lucky numbers in the lottery, is said to have thrown all her other oracular exploits into the shade. The following anecdotes, illustrative of her gift in this way, are told by Doctor Weisskampf, who had them from Colonel Favier, at Paris :"Mile. L. once declared to the celebrated comic actor, Polier, that one, two, or even three prizes, were assigned by destiny, generally speaking, to every man; but that she could not tell when and where any particular person's fortunate numbers would be drawn, without inspecting such person's hand. She said, further, that if she could collect "But I know it,' exclaimed Tribet; it is 7.' about her all the individuals to whom fortune is favorably disposed, all the lotteries of all Europe | That has been a remarkable number to me all my would not be able to pay the immense winnings life. At seven years of age I came to Paris; seven they would have to claim. Potier very naturally desired to know what were his own fortunate numbers. Mlle. L. contemplated his left hand, and said, Mark the numbers, 9, 11, 37, and 85; stake on these-but not sooner than sixteen years hence in the imperial lottery at Lyons, and you will obtain a quatern. This was in 1810; in 1826, Potier remembered it; the drawing at Lyons took place in May; he staked on the four numbers the sorceress had named, and chose for himself a fifth, the number of his birth-day, 27; and Paris talks yet of the sensation produced when the five numbers Potier had set his money on were drawn. He won 250,000 francs, a sum which made a rich man of him, and by which he sprang, as it were, into the arms of fortune; his wealth increased from day to day, and when he died (which was in May, 1840), his heirs divided a million and a half among them. be "I did so it is just twelve years since.' weeks after my arrival here I was received into the Royal Institute to be educated; seven years after I entered the Institute, Nicci noticed me there, and, finding that I had an ear for music, took me as a pupil; when I was just three times seven years old, I fell in love, married, and obtained, through Nicci, an appointment at the Royal Opera, with a salary of seven hundred livres. Finally, it is a man who lives at No. 7, on the Boulevard, that advised me to come to you. Without a doubt, seven is my fortunate number.' "Good: choose, then, 7 for your quatern; very likely this number also will win.' "Tribet staggered from her presence like one But he had not money enough drunk with joy. to stake a large sum, and the prophetess had declared, as she did in all cases, that it would not do to stake borrowed money. The poor actor had only twenty francs in the world-he went and The day of the tirage arstaked the whole sum. "Potier's good luck reached the ears of Tribet, another actor, a man to whom nature had been some-rived, and Tribet's four numbers came out of the what chary of talent, but, to make amends, extreme- wheel; not one failed-and the man who but the ly liberal in the matter of children. He flew to Mlle. day before had not a sou, found himself the posLenormand-she declined to give him any informa-sessor of ninety-six thousand francs! Who can tion; he besought her on his knees, but she con- describe his happiness? He ran through the tinued inflexible; he supplicated, he conjured her, streets without his hat; he embraced friends and she perused his hand, but only shook her head in enemies; he told every one he met that he was silence, sighed, and left him. Tribet was out of become a capitalist; he was so wild that he took his senses at this silence of the oracle-he follow-a box at the theatre to see Tribet play;' in short, 6 his head grew giddy, and what Lenormand had | You will be able to pay your creditor, and be a prophesied came literally to pass. His good luck rich man still; the hand that has brought you to had made him crazy; his family, his good wife, beggary shall raise you to fortune, or there are his children, seemed to him a burden; Paris was no stars in heaven.' too narrow for him; he put up his money and set off in secret for London. Arrived there, he speedily dissipated the half of his fortuue, and then became a constant guest at the hazard table. At first, like most tyros in play, he won, but fortune soon turned against him, and loss followed loss, till nothing more was left him to lose. There now remained nothing of his destiny unfilled but its dreadful close, and this was not long wanting. In 1828, his body was taken up in the Thames, and it came out on the inquest, that for the last eight days of his miserable life, he had not tasted even a spoonful of warm soup! But poor Arthur had not a sou, for it was but a few days since the usurer had swept his house by a distress: he had nothing either to pawn or to sell. The creditor coolly directed the bailiffs to remove him; then, finding himself alone with the sorceress, he addressed himself to the task of deprecating her resentment, assumed his blandest aspect, thanked her for the fortunate numbers she had so unexpectedly revealed to him, and avowedhis intention to stake ten francs on them without delay. The same sum he counted out on the table of the divineress, as a free-will token of his gratitude. I have long wished,' said he, 'to This event was a terrible shock to Lenor-learn from you what are my numbers: thank mand; she called herself Tribet's murderess, ex-heaven, that an accident, which I must call proviecrated her art, and, for more than a year after, dential, has this day led to the accomplishment of steadily refused every request to divine numbers my wish.' for the lottery. ་ The asurer did not believe, however, that it was in the power even of the redoubtable Pythoness to alter the course of fate; he hurried to the lottery office and recorded his venture. Do not suppose,' replied Lenormand, that In 1830, however, she was induced once you will escape the consequences of having ofmore to do so, under the following circumstances.fended me. Go; stake what sum you will on A man one day hastily entered her cabinet, stated the numbers: I will take care that you shall win himself to be a printer, Pierre Arthur by name, nothing by them.' and entreated her intercession with a creditor, Monsieur So-and-So, whom he knew to have a great veneration for her, and who was at that moment pursuing him with bailiffs. While he spoke, the creditor himself appeared with his "Lenormand had often murmured, that while attendants: he had seen his debtor enter Lenor- she could point out to others the road to wealth, mand's house, and followed him on the spot. it was forbidden her to tread it herself. She could This man was a money-lender: Arthur had been tell those who applied to her the numbers by so unfortunate as to borrow a sum from him four which prizes would be obtained, but was herself years before, and had, since that time, been paying obliged to refrain from staking anything on these him the usurious interest of twenty-four per cent. numbers, because her doing so was certain to -a drain on his earnings which scarcely left the change good fortune into bad. She had read her poor man in a condition to give dry bread to his own destinies as well as those of others, and knew children. A half-year's interest was now due; he that she was one of the few to whom prizes in was totally unable to raise the requisite sum, and the lottery were peremptorily denied. She now his merciless creditor, rejecting all his entreaties rejoiced at this; she resolved to stake the ten for an extension of time, was about to consign his francs the miser had given her on his numbers, children to inevitable starvation, by throwing sure that when she made them her numbers, they their only support into prison. Lenormand readily would not be drawn. It happened as she anticiundertook the intercessor's office, and appealed to pated; the numbers were not drawn, the usurer the usurer's compassion, but it is scarcely neces-lost his ten francs, and the only drawback on the sary to say that the appeal was vain. The siby! grew warm the violation of the sacredness of her roof incensed her, and she said some bitter things to the man of money: this incensed him in his turn, and he told her with a malicious grin, that if she had so much pity for the printer, she had but to pay the two thousand francs which he owed; he would then be her debtor, and she could show him as much indulgence as she pleased. sibyl's gratification was, that his disappointment did not open the doors of the prison to poor Arthur." Colonel Favier, we ought to mention, does not guarantee the truth of these stories, but merely gives them as having been current at Paris in 1831, and on the alleged authority of the witch herself. They, therefore, do not stand on the same footing, as to credit, with the communications of Malchus and the Countess N. N. One "Instead of replying to this taunt, she took the usurer's left hand, and studied its lines in silence. Arthur,' said she, after a few minutes, I have found help for you where you least expected it-thing, however, the colonel states as a in the hand of your oppressor. If you yet pos- matter of notoriety, that Lenormand, eight sess five francs of your own-not borrowed, but honestly earned money-go immediately and days before the death of Louis the Eightstake it on these three numbers, 37, 87, and 88, eenth, gave the following as the five numin the royal lottery. The tirage is to-day; to-bers destined to come out of the wheel at morrow you are the possessor of 24,000 francs. the next drawing, viz. the number of the VOL. XIII. No. 1. 3 king's age, 68; the number of years he had mad do the people appear. Dreams and presentireigned (reckoning from the death of his ments go but a small way: the very beggar swims nephew), 36; the year of the entry of the in an element of omens and suggestions of fortuallies into Paris, 14; the day the king had that can befall him, but it betokens an ambo, a nate numbers, and there is no possible casualty ascended the throne, 26; and the num-terno, a quaterno, and so on. Even the execu ber affixed to his name in the list of the tion of a criminal is explored for oracular meansovereigns of France, 18. All the numbers ings: how the blood gushes, how the body falls, were drawn, and the lottery undertakers of how the poor sinner looks, moves, bears himself the French metropolis will long remember the day of reckoning that followed. We now take our leave of Mademoiselle Lenormand, to whom, witch or no witch, some admiration will always remain due, for having contrived to be believed in by a generation that neither believed in God and his angels, nor the devil and his imps. As to her art, we leave the reader to draw his own conclusions about it, whether mere chance, or some undiscovered properties of numbers, or a real understanding with the in the last moment-all is eagerly noted, and auguries are deduced from each particular, that infallibly indicate the winning numbers in the next estrazione. Here we have the whole trade of the haruspices of old: your Roman will not be robbed of his heathenism; he only mixes up with his faith in these oracles an occasional ejaculation directed to some favorite saint, like those prayers for rich Inglesi, or other children of the north, which form so large a part in the devotions of the innkeepers of the eternal city." In the We conclude with a short anecdote corinvisible world, have most to do with its roborative of this author's views. results. If he decide for the first, we re- latter part of the eighteenth century, a commend to his consideration the follow-Roman Catholic priest, named Maas, of ing utterances of the inspired Novalis : "The fortuitous is not unfathomable; it, too, has a regularity of its own." And again : "He that has a right sense for the fortuitous has the power to use all that is fortuitous for the determining of an unknown fortuitous: he can seek destiny with the same success in the position of the stars, as in sand-grains, in the flight of birds, and in figures." With respect to the two other solutions, we subjoin some remarks of a writer in Kerner's "Magikon," who states it as something not to be denied," that the powers of invisible beings often exercise a strange influence in games of chance, an influence which it would be difficult to resolve into the mere effects of " undiscovered properties of numbers :"_ Paderborn, practised a kind of divination * In illustration of the above we quote what fol. lows from the book of the year, Father Prout's "Facts and Figures from Italy:" "There is a book which has a greater circulation in the Roman States than the New Testament, or Thomas à Kempis, called the 'Book of Dreams, or barrowfuls are sold at every fair, and it is often the the Oracle of the Government Lottery.' Wheel "We should have many proofs (proceeds this writer) that the old demons of the heathen creed still carry on their game, under other masks, in Christendom (especially in southern countries), lous ignorance in this book is a most astounding only book in a whole village. The faith of creduif we were to collect and comment upon the many fact; and no later than four days ago, at the drawing instances which occur to every traveller. What of the lottery, an instance of its infallibility was dabolical mischief is wrought in connexion with quoted in all the haunts of the people. A laborer the lottery! Even in Germany, how many heads fell from the scaffolding of the new hospital in the do you find turned by dreams and presentiments in Corso, and was killed on the spot; his fellow-workrelation to this most ruinous species of gambling, man left the corpse in the street, and ran to consult and that not only among the common people, but often among those who have enjoyed the advan-(fear, blood, fall), were the cabalistic words, whose corresponding numbers, set forth therein, he selected tages of education! Cross the Alps, and the still for his investment of fifteen bajocchi. On Saturday, fury becomes an open one; and the further you his three numbers all came forth from the governtravel southwards, the more universally stark ment urn, winning a prize of three hundred ollars." his Book of Dreams.' Paura, sangue, cascata |