The provencal prophet

In the days when Europe was plentifully supplied with practicing wizards, there lived in France named Michel de Nostredame - called Nostradamus - whose professions were medicine and astrology and whose gift was prophecy. He accurately predicted the deaths of kings, the fall of cities and a host of other great events, although the verses in which he cast the prophecies were so cryptic that many were never deciphered.

People said that his prophecies came from observing the stars in their courses, but his power clearly was inborn and not the result of astrological study, as a homely tale tells.

Once, in his physician's capacity, Nostradamus visited a lord whose mother was ailing. As the two men conferred in the castle courtyard, the lord spied a pair of pigs - a black one and a white - and proposed with a smile that the physician should tell the future of the beasts. Nostradamus promptly replied that he and the lord would eat the black one that a wolf would eat the white.

As a playful trick, the lord secretly ordered that the white pig, not the black, be roasted for supper. That night, as the two men ate, he informed Nostradamus - smacking his lips at the rare taste of his jest - that they were eating white pig. Nostradamus denied it and the cook was summoned to settle the argument.

She confessed to her master that they were in fact eating the black pig. She had killed and dressed the white for cooking as ordered, but when she left it unattended in the kitchen, a tame wolf had gnawed it so thoroghly she was forced to roast the black pig as well, and that was the flesh she has served.