The Cybersybils present Sons of the Dew

"Are you familiar with Balzac's story The Ruggieri's Secret? No - how delightful, for I bought the volume as a gift for you just the other day. Allow me to read a few passages from the text - Balzac was the greatest adept of his age, considered a Master in the occult circles of late 19th c. Europe."

"Oh, I know - I love Balzac! Please, do continue."

Cosimo and Catherine.

There was a man for whom Catherine de Médicis clung to more than to her children; his name was Cosimo Ruggiero. She gave him rooms in her Hôtel de Soissons; she made him her chief counselor, instructing him to tell her if the stars ratified the advice and common sense of her ordinary advisers.

Certain curious facts justified the power which Cosimo exerted over his mistress till her last breath. One of the most learned men of the sixteenth century was beyond doubt the physician to Catherine's father, Lorenzo de Médicis, the Duke of Urbino. The physician was called Ruggiero the Elder - vecchio Ruggier, and in French, Roger l'Ancien, with authors who have written on alchemy - to distiguish him from his two sons, Lorenzo Ruggiero, called Lorenzo the Great by cabalistic writers, and Cosimo Ruggiero, Catherine's astrologer, also known as simply Roger by several historians. French custom altered their name to Ruggieri, as it did Catherine's from Medici to de Médicis.

The elder Ruggieri, then, was so highly esteemed by the family of the Medici that the two dukes, Cosimo and Lorenzo, were godfathers to his sons. In his capacity of mathematician, astrologer, and physician to the House of Medici - three offices that were often scarcely distinguished - he cast the horoscope of Catherine's nativity, in concert with Bazile, the famous mathematician.

In the horoscope cast by Bazile and Ruggiero the Elder, the principal events of Catherine's life were predicted with an accuracy that is enough to drive disbelievers to despair. This forecast announced the disasters which affected her early life, her marriage with a prince of France, his unexpected accession to the throne, the birth and the number of her children. Three of her sons were to reign in succession, her two daughters were to become queens; all were to die childless. And this was all so exactly verified, that many historians have regarded it as a prophecy after the event.