The " Nun of Blois," if she should prove a
false prophet after all, has certainly been what the children call, in the game of magical music, very " warm." She predicted, it will be remem- bered, that Blois would not be taken by the enemy, who was to cause such rivers of blood in Paris, and in many parts of France ; but the approach of the enemy was to be so close at hand that the nuns were to be all ready to leave their convent. " At last three couriers will come. The first will announce that all is lost." The second will arrive in the middle of the night, in hot haste, en route for the Berry (a district south of the Loire, where the chief part of the Army of the Loire is now encamped), and will give hopes of good news by a third courier to arrive in the morning. The nuns will be praying at six in the morning, and be told that two couriers have passed, when the third, fire and water (feu et eau), will arrive, and be due at Tours at seven, and he will bring the good news, and a Te Deum will be sung. Possibly on the night of Thursday the first messenger may have arrived, taking news of the Duke of Meck- lenburg's " severe but victorious engagement," and saying all was lost. We do not venture to speculate on the second or third, who would, however, be very likely to be going to the Berry and to Tours,—whether they take good news there, or, as seems decidedly more likely, bad. But right or wrong, for a prophetess speaking in 1808, the Nun of Blois has come curiously near her mark. No one could .have guessed in 1808 that during a time of invasion when the Seine was to run with blood, Blois would be seriously threatened, and messengers going through it in hot haste to Tours (a place then quite unlikely to be the seat of Go- vernment) and to the Berry, precisely the two points to which messengers would have been sent by General Chanzy during the last three days.
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