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It takes a large amount of nerve to write in 1980 a book that predicts that by 1985 the Soviets will have Invaded Western Europe and the French monarchy restored, and then then 1985 write another book about how your first one has been vindicated: but M. Fontbrune is clearly not short of nerve. This book includes a section denouncing all the other authors who he claims have cashed in on his first book (including the author of a fascinating-sounding book entitled Nostradamus's Jam Recipes) and goes on to quote items from his first book that he claims have been fulfilled.
He suppresses all the 'World War Ill by 1985' references but includes as prophecies mostly those items in his first book relating to events already underway in 1980, such as unrest in Poland and trouble between Iran and Iraq. Also of interest is the fact that he reprints Nostradamus' introduction to his prophecies. This introduction is clearly a problem for Nostradamus believers since it describes in clear language a future for Europe that bears no relationship to anything that actually happened. Fontbrune however is equal to the challenge. He simple divides Nostradamus's narrative into small sections, enabling him to claim that one bit was fulfilled by Hitler, another by Napoleon, and so on, in no particular historical order.
He also continues to misrepresent Nostradamus's interest in the year 1792 by slipping in a bracketed reference to the French monarchy, which is not as much as hinted at in the original. He reprints the prophecy of a great future for Venice around 1800 but forgets his usual parade of historical erudition enough not to mention to his readers that in fact Napoleon ended Venetian independence at this time. Is this simply deliberate charlatanry?
Presumably that accounts for a large part of Fontbrune' s motives. However, in view of his manifest animosity to the French government and the European Peace Movement perhaps it belongs partly in the old genre of discovering ancient prophecies to buttress a political case.
Roger Sandell, Magonia 19, May 1985
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