But if comets were a source of superstition, other phenomena of the heavens were also supposed to influence the destinies of royalty; and hence Queen Catherine de Medicis, though a woman of strong mind, was deluded with the more ignorant by the vanity of astrological judgments. The professors of the science were so much consulted in her Court that the most trivial act was not done without an appeal to the stars. One of the most noted astrologers under her patronage was Nostradamus, a physician of Provence, who to medicine joined astrology, which soon augmented his income. He was summoned to Paris by Catherine in 1556, and one of his predictions--which turned out hopelessly wrong--was contained in a small book issued in the year 1572, under this title, “Prognostication touching the Marriage of the very honourable and beloved Henry, by the grace of God King of Navarre, and the very illustrious Princess Marguerite of France, calculated by Master Bernard Abbatio, Doctor in Medicine, and Astrologer to the very Christian King of France.” In this astrological calculation he professed to show that the couple would “love one another intensely all their lives,” whereas they always hated each other; and he further declared that they would “approach a hundred years,” but Henry IV. died before he was sixty. Many children were to be the outcome of the marriage, whereas there were none, for the marriage was broken off, and Henry married to Marie de Medicis. But speaking of Catherine de Medicis, there is probably no sovereign in history “of whose persevering addiction to the occult arts so many singular traditions are preserved.” Anecdotes might be told of the amulets and talismans which she wore; of the observatories and laboratories which she fitted up in the Louvre; of the enchanted mirror in which she beheld the fortunes of her descendants; “and, above all, that singular and sudden change in her disposition which history attributes to the cruel insults of her dissolute husband, but which popular superstition ascribed to the malign influence of her supernatural allies.”[172]