Alors!
And you thought your – how you say – “meteorologists” – had a difficult time. Mon couer! Try being the man who is expected to predict all the significant events of human existence!
It seemed quite innocent at first – I made a simple prediction, it came true. Then every ridiculous superstitious fool in France cast me as some kind of magical prognosticator. “Nostradamus, Nostradamus, when will the harvest be plentiful again? Nostradamus, will my child be born a girl or a boy? Nostradamus, when will the Crown Prince marry?”
Sacre bleu.
I never really believed my own so-called prophecies, but I was fascinated by one subject: la mort l’homme – the end of man.
I threw around a few ideas about how and when it may come to pass – all of which became vérité d'evangile – gospel truth – in the eyes of my followers. They were hungry for such things, so, I gave them their predictions. So vague that they were all right (and all wrong – it is all in the eye of the beholder).
Before long, I was legendary. I published many works, was close to the Royal Family for a while. And that’s when I met Jean-Claude Dumiére.
Dumiére was a Royal Physician, but on the side – far from the authoritative eyes of the Church, which would’ve imprisoned him immediately for dabbling in such things – he was a master alchemist.
Late one night, I paid him a visit in his secret chambers, deep in the bowels of the palace. I was one of the few who knew how to unlock the giant wooden door with its rusting iron hinges. I let myself in, and took a seat in the only chair in the room, a red velvet highback. The room was dimly lit by three hanging chandeliers of six candles each, along with a candelabrum attached to the wall above Dumiére’s work area. The air smelled of sulfur.
“Nostredame,” he said, turning around from his work. He never would call me by my Latin name. “What brings you to my realm?”
My white-bearded friend’s dark floor-length cloak made him appear to hover as he stepped toward me.
I peered at the bubbling test tubes and smoking vials across the top of his long, wooden table. “I have come to call in the favor you owe me.”
“Anything, dear Doctor.”
“I want to see the end of man.”
“And when, exactly, would that be?” he asked. I knew he was joking – he was well aware that I was clueless about it.
“You know I have no idea how or when humanity will end – even the Savior Himself knows not the hour in which He cometh. But I must be there to see the end. I must.”
“So you wish to be immortal?” he said, turning to stir one of his solutions with a small rod.
“Not necessarily,” I said. “I just want a way to be there – to witness it for myself when it comes.”
“You speak of traveling through time? Such a thing is far beyond my considerable talents, my friend.”
“Jean Claude, I admit it – I have become obsessed. Perhaps it is my curse for exciting the imaginations of men, making them believe I could see the future.” I pulled at my long beard. “You have potions, spells – a dark knowledge. Surely there is some way.”
I’d lost my own wife and children to the plague, but my rose pills, developed later, had saved Dumiére’s children from the deadly disease. So Dumiére felt he and his family owed an honorable debt to me. How could he say no?
“I do have something that may meet your needs,” he said, after some consideration. He walked to a cabinet and pulled out two large bottles. “I’ve noticed you are getting more and more sick, my friend. How long do you think you have?”
“That is why I have come to you tonight,” I said. “The edema is taking my life – I can feel it. I told Chavigny that I will be dead in the morning. Of course, he believed me.”
Dumiére chuckled mirthlessly. “But you do think the end – your end – is near.”
“Yes.”
“Then take off your robes and lay down on this table,” said Dumiére. “I will help your last prediction come true.”
“You will kill me?”
“No, friend. But everyone else will think you dead.”
I looked at him cautiously.
“Trust me,” he said as he uncorked one of the bottles. A wisp of steam escaped, and the sulfur smell of the room was replaced by the smell of strong tea leaves.
I rose from the chair, disrobed, and laid on the table as instructed. He poured some of the contents of the bottle onto a cloth, and began smothering it all over my body. It was cool at first, but then became warm and tingly.
“It is a salve,” he said, working down my torso to my legs. “It will make you sleep the sleep of death, but your body will not decompose.” He gestured toward the other bottle. “That one has the opposite effect – it will quicken you. It is my solemn promise to you that you will be awakened – revived – when it appears the end of man is truly nigh. If it is not in my lifetime, then my children will do it. Or their children. Through all generations, we will make this our oath.”
“And you know this stuff works?” I said, starting to get sleepy.
“I have tested it on many animals,” he said. “And one prisoner.”
As I faded, I felt a sudden panic. “You will wake me? You will wake me?” I said, half delirious. “You will not let me miss the end?”
“I promise.”