George I. had been warned by a French prophetess to take care of his wife, as it was fated that he would not survive her more than a year. Such an effect, it is said, had the prediction on his mind, that shortly after his wife’s death, on taking leave of his son and the Princess of Wales, when on the eve of his departure for Hanover, he told them that he should never see them again. “At the same time,” adds Mr. Jesse,[178] “with a contempt of all laws, human and divine, he gave directions that his wife’s will should be burnt, and this for the mere purpose, it seems, of depriving his own son of some valuable legacies bequeathed to him by his unfortunate mother”--his wife and his only son having, it would appear, been the two persons whom he most disliked. Divination by cards was in the seventeenth century a fashionable amusement at the Court of France. A well-known anecdote tells of the ominous gloom which was on one occasion cast over the circle of Anne of Austria by the obstinacy with which the knave of spades--the sure emblem of a speedy death--persisted in falling to the lot of the young and brilliant Duc de Candale: a prediction which was shortly afterwards verified. The superstitious fancy of the “divinity that hedges in a king,” and made Cæsar encourage his alarmed boatman, “Fear nothing, you carry Cæsar and the fortune of Cæsar in your boat,” is told of Rufus, who, when the sailors pointed out the danger of putting to sea, exclaimed: “I have never heard of a king who was shipwrecked; weigh anchor, and you will see that the winds will be with us.” The immunity of an anointed king had its influence on the strong-minded German Emperor, William I. A young married couple visited the island of Meinau, where the Emperor was residing with his son-in-law, the Grand Duke of Baden. On their departure, so violent a storm came on that their boatman found it impossible to proceed, and they were forced to return to the island. The Emperor, seeing their plight, met them on the beach, and ordering steam to be got up in a small iron steam launch, placed it at their service. But the lady, alarmed at her first encounter with the waves, demurred somewhat to trusting herself again to their mercies. “Do not be alarmed,” said the Emperor, “the steamer bears my name, and that ought to reassure you.” But Henry I. does not seem to have been of this opinion, for when in June 1131 he had embarked from Normandy for England, he was so dismayed by the bursting of a water-spout over the vessel and the fury of the wind and waves, that, believing his last hour was at hand, he made a penitent acknowledgment of his sins, promising to lead a new life if God should preserve him from the peril of death.