Many have held that God has great personages more immediately under his
protection, and that minds of superior excellence have bestowed on them a
good genius, or secret intelligencer, to apprise them of good, or warn
them against evil. Of this number I might reckon the Queen my mother,
who has had frequent intimations of the kind; particularly the very night
before the tournament which proved so fatal to the King my father, she
dreamed that she saw him wounded in the eye, as it really happened; upon
which she awoke, and begged him not to run a course that day, but content
himself with looking on. Fate prevented the nation from enjoying so much
happiness as it would have done had he followed her advice. Whenever she
lost a child, she beheld a bright flame shining before her, and would
immediately cry out, "God save my children!" well knowing it was the
harbinger of the death of some one of them, which melancholy news was
sure to be confirmed very shortly after. During her very dangerous
illness at Metz, where she caught a pestilential fever, either from the
coal fires, or by visiting some of the nunneries which had been infected,
and from which she was restored to health and to the kingdom through the
great skill and experience of that modern Asculapius, M. de Castilian,
her physician--I say, during that illness, her bed being surrounded by my
brother King Charles, my brother and sister Lorraine, several members of
the Council, besides many ladies and princesses, not choosing to quit
her, though without hopes of her life, she was heard to cry out, as if
she saw the battle of Jarnac: "There! see how they flee! My son, follow
them to victory! Ah, my son falls! O my God, save him! See there! the
Prince de Conde is dead!" All who were present looked upon these words
as proceeding from her delirium, as she knew that my brother Anjou was on
the point of giving battle, and thought no more of it. On the night
following, M. de Losses brought the news of the battle; and, it being
supposed that she would be pleased to hear of it, she was awakened, at
which she appeared to be angry, saying: "Did I not know it yesterday?" It