DURING his life at Padua it would appear that Cardan, over and above the
allowance made to him by his mother, had no other source of income than
the gaming-table.[45] However futile and disastrous his sojourn at this
University may have been, he at least took away with him one possession of
value, to wit his doctorate of medicine, on the strength of which he began
to practise as a country physician at Sacco. The record of his life during
these years gives the impression that he must have been one of the most
wretched of living mortals. The country was vexed by every sort of
misfortune, by prolonged warfare, by raging pestilence, by famine, and by
intolerable taxation;[46] but while he paints this picture of misery and
desolation in one place, he goes on to declare in another that the time
which he spent at Sacco was the happiest he ever knew.[47] No greater
instance of inconsistency is to be found in his pages. He writes: "I
gambled, I occupied myself with music, I walked abroad, I feasted, giving
scant attention the while to my studies. I feared no hurt, I paid my
respects to the Venetian gentlemen living in the town, and frequented
their houses. I, too, was in the very flower of my age, and no time could
have been more delightful than this which lasted for five years and a
half."[48]
But for almost the whole of this period Cardan was labouring under a
physical misfortune concerning which he writes in another place in terms
of almost savage bitterness. During ten years of his life, from his
twenty-first to his thirty-first year, he suffered from the loss of virile
power, a calamity which he laments in the following words: "And I maintain
that this misfortune was to me the worst of evils. Compared with it
neither the harsh servitude under my father, nor unkindness, nor the
troubles of litigation, nor the wrongs done me by my fellow-townsmen, nor
the scorn of my fellow-physicians, nor the ill things falsely spoken
against me, nor all the measureless mass of possible evil, could have
brought me to such despair, and hatred of life, and distaste of all
pleasure, and lasting sorrow. I bitterly wept this misery, that I must
needs be a laughing-stock, that marriage must be denied me, and that I
must ever live in solitude. You ask for the cause of this misfortune, a
matter which I am quite unable to explain. Because of the reasons just
mentioned, and because I dreaded that men should know how grave was the
ill afflicting me, I shunned the society of women; and, on account of this
habit, the same miserable public scandal which I desired so earnestly to
avoid, arose concerning me, and brought upon me the suspicion of still
more nefarious practices: in sooth it seemed that there was no further
calamity left for me to endure."[49] After reading these words, it is hard
to believe that a man, afflicted with a misfortune which he characterizes
in these terms, could have been even moderately happy; much less in that
state of bliss which he sits down to describe forty years afterwards.
But the end of his life at Sacco was fated to be happier than the
beginning, and it is possible that memories of the last months he spent
there may have helped to colour with rosy tint the picture of happiness
recently referred to. In the first place he was suddenly freed from his
physical infirmity, and shortly after his restoration he met and married
the woman who, as long as she lived with him, did all that was possible to
make him happy. Every momentous event of Cardan's life--and many a
trifling one as well--was heralded by some manifestation of the powers
lying beyond man's cognition. In writing about the signs and tokens which
served as premonitions of his courtship and marriage, he glides easily
into a description of the events themselves in terms which are worth
producing. "In times past I had my home in Sacco, and there I led a joyful
life, as if I were a man unvexed by misfortune (I recall this circumstance
somewhat out of season, but the dream I am about to tell of seems only too
appropriate to the occasion), or a mortal made free of the habitations of
the blest, or rather of some region of delight. Then, on a certain night,
I seemed to find myself in a pleasant garden, beautiful exceedingly,
decked with flowers and filled with fruits of divers sorts, and a soft air
breathed around. So lovely was it all that no painter nor our poet Pulci,
nor any imagination of man could have figured the like. I was standing in
the forecourt of this garden, the door whereof was open, and there was
another door on the opposite side, when lo! I beheld before me a damsel
clad in white. I embraced and kissed her; but before I could kiss her
again, the gardener closed the door. I straightway begged him earnestly
that he would open it again, but I begged in vain; wherefore, plunged in
grief and clinging to the damsel, I seemed to be shut out of the garden.
"A little time after this there was a rumour in the town of a house on
fire, and I was roused from sleep to hurry to the spot. Then I learned
that the house belonged to one Altobello Bandarini,[50] a captain of the
Venetian levies in the district of Padua. I had no acquaintance with him,
in sooth I scarcely knew him by sight. Now it chanced that after the fire
he hired a house next door to my own, a step which displeased me somewhat,
for such a neighbour was not to my taste; but what was I to do? After the
lapse of a few days, when I was in the street, I perceived a young girl
who, as to her face and her raiment, was the exact image of her whom I had
beheld in my dream. But I said to myself, 'What is this girl to me? If I,
poor wretch that I am, take to wife a girl dowered with naught, except a
crowd of brothers and sisters, it will be all over with me; forasmuch as I
can hardly keep myself as it is. If I should attempt to carry her off, or
to have my will of her by stealth, there will of a surety be some
tale-bearers about; and her father, being a fellow-townsman and a soldier
to boot, would not sit down lightly under such an injury. In this case, or
in that, it is hard to say what course I should follow, for if this
affair should come to the issue I most desire, I must needs fly the
place.' From that same hour these thoughts and others akin to them
possessed my brain, which was only too ready to harbour them, and I felt
it would be better to die than to live on in such perplexity. Thenceforth
I was as one love-possessed, or even burnt up with passion, and I
understood what meaning I might gather from the reading of my dream.
Moreover I was by this time freed from the chain which had held me back
from marriage. Thus I, a willing bridegroom, took a willing bride, her
kinsfolk questioning us how this thing had been brought about, and
offering us any help which might be of service; which help indeed proved
of very substantial benefit.
"But the interpretation of my dreams did not work itself out entirely in
the after life of my wife; it made itself felt likewise in the lives of my
children. My wife lived with me fifteen years, and alas! this ill-advised
marriage was the cause of all the misfortunes which subsequently happened
to me. These must have come about either by the working of the divine
will, or as the recompense due for some ill deeds wrought by myself or by
my forefathers."[51]
The dream aforesaid was not the only portent having reference to his
marriage. After describing shakings and tremblings of his bed, for which
indeed a natural cause was not far to seek, he tells how in 1531 a certain
dog, of gentle temper as a rule, and quiet, kept up a persistent howling
for a long time; how some ravens perched on the house-top and began
croaking in an unusual manner; and how, when his servant was breaking up a
faggot, some sparks of fire flew out of the same; whereupon, "by an
unlooked-for step I married a wife, and from that time divers misfortunes
have attended me."[52] Lucia, the wife of his choice, was the eldest
daughter of Altobello Bandarini, who had, besides her, three daughters and
four sons. Jerome, as it has been already noted, was possessed with a fear
lest he should be burdened by his brothers- and sisters-in-law after his
marriage; but, considering that he was a young unknown physician, without
either money or patients, and that Bandarini was a man of position and
repute, with some wealth and more shrewdness, the chances were that the
burden would lie on the other side. Cardan seems to have inherited Fazio's
contempt for wealth, or at least to have made a profession thereof; for,
in chronicling the event of his marriage, he sets down, with a certain
degree of pomposity, that he took a wife without a dower on account of a
certain vow he had sworn.[53] If the bride was penniless the father-in-law
was wealthy, and the last-named fact might well have proved a powerful
argument to induce Cardan to remain at Sacco, albeit he had little scope
for his calling. That he soon determined to quit the place, is an evidence
of his independence of spirit, and of his disinclination to sponge upon
his well-to-do connections. Bandarini, when this scheme was proposed to
him, vetoed it at once. He was unwilling to part with his daughter, and
possibly he may have taken a fancy to his son-in-law, for Cardan has left
it on record that Bandarini was greatly pleased with the match; he ended,
however, by consenting to the migration, which was not made without the
intervention of a warning portent. A short time before the young couple
departed, it happened that a tile got mixed with the embers in Bandarini's
bed-chamber; and, in the course of the night, exploded with a loud
report, and the fragments thereof were scattered around. This event
Bandarini regarded as an augury of evil, and indeed evil followed swiftly
after. Before a year had passed he was dead, some holding that his death
had been hastened by the ill conduct of his eldest son, and others
whispering suspicions of poison.
Jerome and his young wife betook themselves to Milan, but this visit seems
to have been fully as unprofitable as the one he had paid in 1529. In that
year he had to face his first rejection by the College of Physicians, when
he made application for admission; and there is indirect evidence that he
now made a second application with no better result.[54] In any case his
affairs were in a very bad way. If he had money in his pocket he would not
keep long away from the gaming-table; and, with the weight of trouble ever
bearing him down more and more heavily, it is almost certain that his
spirits must have suffered, and that poor Lucia must have passed many an
unhappy hour on account of his nervous irritability. Then the gates of his
profession remained closed to him by the action of the College. The
pretext the authorities gave for their refusal to admit him was his
illegitimate birth; but it is not unlikely that they may have mistrusted
as a colleague the son of Fazio Cardano, and that stories of the
profligate life and the intractable temper of the candidate may have been
brought to them.[55] His health suffered from the bad air of the city
almost as severely as before, and Lucia, who was at this time pregnant,
miscarried at four months, and shortly afterwards had a second misfortune
of the same kind. His mother's temper was not of the sweetest, and it is
quite possible that between her and her daughter-in-law there may have
been strained relations. Cardan at any rate found that he must once more
beat a retreat from Milan, wherefore, at the end of April 1533, he made up
his mind to remove to Gallarate.
This town has already been mentioned as chief place of the district, from
which the Cardan family took its origin. Before going thither Jerome had
evidently weighed the matter well, and he has set down at some length the
reasons which led him to make this choice. "Thus, acting under the reasons
aforesaid (the family associations), I resolved to go to Gallarate, in
order that I might have the enjoyment of four separate advantages which it
offered. Firstly, that in the most healthy air of the place I might shake
off entirely the distemper which I had contracted in Milan. Secondly, that
I might earn something by my profession, seeing that then I should be free
to practise. Thirdly, that there would be no need for me to pine away
while I beheld those physicians, by whom I reckoned I had been despoiled,
flourishing in wealth and in the high estimation of all men. Lastly, that
by following a more frugal way of life, I might make what I possessed last
the longer. For all things are cheaper in the country, since they have to
be carried from the country into the town, and many necessaries may be had
for the asking. Persuaded by these arguments, I went to this place, and I
was not altogether deceived, seeing that I recovered my health, and the
son--who was to be reft from me later on by the Senate--was born to
me."[56]
Employment at Gallarate was, however, almost as scarce as it had been at
Sacco, wherefore Jerome found leisure in plenty for literary work. He
began a treatise on Fate; but, even had this been completed, it would
scarcely have filled the empty larder by the proceeds of its sale. More
profitable was some chance employment which was given to him by Filippo
Archinto,[57] a generous and accomplished young nobleman of Milan, who was
ambitious to figure as a writer on Astronomy, and, it may be remarked,
Archinto's benefactions were not confined to the payment for the hack work
which Jerome did for him at this period. Had it not been for his
subsequent patronage and support, it is quite possible that Cardan would
have gone under in the sea of adversity.
In spite of the cheapness of provisions at Gallarate, and of occasional
meals taken gratis from the fields, complete destitution seemed to be only
a matter of days, and just at this crisis, to add to his
embarrassments--though he longed earnestly for the event--Lucia was
brought to bed with her first-born living child on May 14, 1534. The
child's birth was accompanied by divers omens, one of which the father
describes, finding therein some premonition of future disaster. "I had
great fear of his life until the fifteenth day of June, on which day,
being a Sunday, he was baptized. The sun shone brightly into the
bed-chamber: it was between the hours of eleven and twelve in the
forenoon; and, according to custom, we were all gathered round the
mother's bed except a young servant, the curtain was drawn away from the
window and fastened to the wall, when suddenly a large wasp flew into the
room, and circled round the infant. We were all greatly afeard for the
child, but the wasp did him no hurt. The next moment it came against the
curtain, making so great a noise that you would have said that a drum was
being beaten, and all ran towards the place, but found no trace of the
wasp. It could not have flown out of the room, because all eyes had been
fixed upon it. Then all of us who were then present felt some foreboding
of what subsequently came to pass, but did not deem that the end would be
so bitter as it proved to be."[58]
The impulse which drives men in desperate straits to seek shelter in the
streets of a city was as strong in Cardan's time as it is to-day. At
Gallarate the last coin was now spent, and there was an extra mouth to
feed. There seemed to be no other course open but another retreat to
Milan. Archinto was rich in literary ambitions, which might perchance
stimulate him to find farther work for the starving scholar: and there was
Chiara also who would scarcely let her grandchild die of want. The
revelation which Cardan makes of himself and of his way of life at this
time is not one to enlist sympathy for him entirely; but it is not wanting
in a note of pathetic sincerity. "For a long time the College at Milan
refused to admit me, and during these days I was assuredly a spendthrift
and heedless. In body I was weakly, and in estate plundered by thieves on
all sides, yet I never grudged money for the buying of books. My residence
at Gallarate brought me no profit, for in the whole nineteen months I
lived there, I did not receive more than twenty-five crowns towards the
rent of the house I hired. I had such ill luck with the dice that I was
forced to pawn all my wife's jewels, and our very bed. If it is a wonder
that I found myself thus bereft of all my substance, it is still more
wonderful that I did not take to begging on account of my poverty, and a
wonder greater still that I harboured in my mind no unworthy thoughts
against my forefathers, or against right living, or against those honours
which I had won--honours which afterwards stood me in good stead--but bore
my misfortunes with mind undisturbed."[59]
Cardan's worldly fortunes were now at their lowest ebb. Burdened with a
wife and child, he had found it necessary to return, after a second futile
attempt to gain a living by his calling in a country town, to Milan, his
"stony-hearted step-mother." If he had reckoned on his mother's bounty he
was doomed to disappointment, for Chiara was an irritable woman, and as
her son's temper was none of the sweetest, it is almost certain that they
must have quarrelled occasionally. It is hard to believe that they could
have been on good terms at this juncture, otherwise she would scarcely
have allowed him to take his wife and child to what was then the public
workhouse of the city;[60] but this place was his only refuge, and in
October 1534 he was glad to shelter himself beneath its roof.
There was in Cardan's nature a strong vein of melancholy, and up to the
date now under consideration he had been the victim of a fortune
calculated to deepen rather than disperse his morbid tendencies. A proof
of his high courage and dauntless perseverance may be deduced from the
fact that neither poverty, nor the sense of repeated failure, nor the
flouts of the Milanese doctors, prevailed at any time to quench in his
heart the love of fame,[61] or to disabuse him of the conviction that he,
poverty-stricken wretch as he was, would before long bind Fortune to his
chariot-wheels, and would force the adverse world to acknowledge him as
one of its master minds. The dawn was now not far distant, but the last
hours of his night of misfortune were very dark. The worst of the
struggle, as far as the world was concerned, was over, and the sharpest
sorrows and the heaviest disgrace reserved for Cardan in the future were
to be those nourished in his own household.
Writing of his way of life and of the vices and defects of his character,
he says: "If a man shall fail in his carriage before the world as he fails
in other things, who shall correct him? Thus I myself will do duty for
that one leper who alone out of the ten who were healed came back to our
Lord. By reasoning of this sort, Physicians and Astrologers trace back the
origin of our natural habits to our primal qualities, to the training of
our will, and to our occupations and conversation. In every man all these
are found in proper ratio to the time of life of each individual;
nevertheless it will be easy to discern marked variations in cases
otherwise similar. Therefore it behoves us to hold fast to some guiding
principle chosen out of these, and I on my part am inclined, as far as it
may be allowed, to say with respect to all of them, [Greek: gnôthi
seauton].
"My own nature in sooth was never a mystery to myself. I was ever
hot-tempered, single-minded, and given to women. From these cardinal
tendencies there proceeded truculence of temper, wrangling, obstinacy,
rudeness of carriage, anger, and an inordinate desire, or rather a
headstrong passion, for revenge in respect to any wrong done to me; so
that this inclination, which is censured by many, became to me a delight.
To put it briefly, I held _At vindicta bonum vita jucundius ipsa_. As a
general rule I went astray but seldom, though it is a common saying,
'_Natura nostra prona est ad malum_.' I am moreover truthful, mindful of
benefits wrought to me, a lover of justice and of my own people, a
despiser of money, a worshipper of that fame which defies death, prone to
thrust aside what is commonplace, and still more disposed to treat mere
trifles in the same way. Still, knowing well how great may be the power of
little things at any moment during the course of an undertaking, I never
make light of aught which may be useful. By nature I am prone to every
vice and ill-doing except ambition, and I, if no one else does, know my
own imperfections. But because of my veneration for God, and because I
recognize the vanity and emptiness of all things of this sort, it often
happens that, of my own free will, I forego certain opportunities for
taking revenge which may be offered to me. I am timid, with a cold heart
and a hot brain, given to reflection and the consideration of things many
and mighty, and even of things which can never come to pass. I can even
let my thoughts concern themselves with two distinct subjects at the same
time. Those who throw out charges of garrulity and extravagance by way of
contradicting any praise accorded to me, charge me with the faults of
others rather than my own. I attack no man, I only defend myself.
"And what reason is there why I should spend myself in this cause since I
have so often borne witness of the emptiness of this life of ours? My
excuse must be that certain men have praised me, wherefore they cannot
deem me altogether wicked. I have always trained myself to let my face
contradict my thoughts. Thus while I can simulate what is not, I cannot
dissimulate what is. To accomplish this is no difficult task if a man
cultivates likewise the habit of hoping for nothing. By striving for
fifteen years to compass this end and by spending much trouble over the
same I at last succeeded. Urged on by this humour I sometimes go forth in
rags, sometimes finely dressed, sometimes silent, sometimes talkative,
sometimes joyful, sometimes sad; and on this account my two-fold mood
shows everything double. In my youth I rarely spent any care in keeping my
hair in order, because of my inclination for other pursuits more to my
taste. My gait is irregular. I move now quickly, now slowly. When I am at
home I go with my legs naked as far as the ankles. I am slack in duty and
reckless in speech, and specially prone to show irritation over anything
which may disgust or irk me."
The above-written self-description does not display a personality
particularly attractive. Jerome Cardan was one of those men who experience
a morbid gratification in cataloguing all their sinister points of
character, and exaggerating them at the same time; and in this picture, as
in many others scattered about the _De Vita Propria_, the shadows may have
been put in too strongly.
In the foregoing pages reference was made to certain acts of benevolence
done to Cardan by the family of Archinto. It is not impossible that the
promises and persuasions of his young patron Filippo may have had some
weight in inducing Jerome to shift his home once more. Whatever befell he
could hardly make his case worse; but whether Filippo had promised help or
not, he showed himself now a true and valuable friend. There was in Milan
a public lectureship in geometry and astronomy supported by a small
endowment left by a certain Tommaso Plat, and to this post, which happened
opportunely to be vacant, Cardan was appointed by the good offices of
Filippo Archinto. Yet even when he was literally a pauper he seems to have
felt some scruples about accepting this office, but fortunately in this
instance his poverty overcame his pride. The salary was indeed a very
small one,[62] and the lecturer was not suffered to handle the whole of
it, but it was at least liberal enough to banish the dread of starvation,
and his duties, which consisted solely in the preparation and delivery of
his lectures, did not debar him from literary work on his own account.
Wherefore in his leisure time he worked hard at his desk.
Any differences which may have existed between him and his mother were now
removed, for he took her to live with him, the household being made up of
himself, his wife, his mother, a friend (a woman), a nurse, the little
boy, a man- and maidservant, and a mule.[63] Possibly Chiara brought her
own income with her, and thus allowed the establishment to be conducted on
a more liberal scale. The Plat lectureship would scarcely have maintained
three servants, and Jerome's gains from other sources must have been as
yet very slender. His life at this time was a busy one, but he always
contrived to portion out his days in such wise that certain hours were
left for recreation. At such times as he was called upon to teach, the
class-room, of course, had the first claims. After the lecture he would
walk in the shade outside the city walls, then return to his dinner, then
divert himself with music, and afterwards go fishing in the pools and
streams hard by the town. In the course of time he obtained other
employment, being appointed physician to the Augustinian friars. The Prior
of this Order, Francesco Gaddi, was indeed his first patient of note. He
tells how he cured this man of a biennial leprosy after treating him for
six months;[64] adding that his labour was in vain, inasmuch as Gaddi died
a violent death afterwards. The refusal of the College of Milan to admit
him to membership did not forbid him to prescribe for whatever patients
might like to consult him by virtue of his Paduan degree. He read
voraciously everything which came in his way, and it must have been during
these years that he stored his memory with that vast collection of facts
out of which he subsequently compounded the row of tomes which form his
legacy to posterity. Filippo Archinto was unfailing in his kindness, and
Jerome at this time was fortunate enough to attract the attention of
certain other Milanese citizens of repute who afterwards proved to be
valuable friends; Ludovico Madio, Girolamo Guerrini a jeweller, Francesco
Belloti, and Francesco della Croce. The last-named was a skilled
jurisconsult, whose help proved of great service in a subsequent
litigation between Jerome and the College of Physicians.
All his life long Cardan was a dreamer of dreams, and he gives an account
of one of his visions in this year, 1534, which, whether regarded as an
allegory or as a portent, is somewhat remarkable. "In the year 1534, when
I was as it were groping in the dark, when I had settled naught as to my
future life, and when my case seemed to grow more desperate day by day, I
beheld in a dream the figure of myself running towards the base of a
mountain which stood upon my right hand, in company with a vast crowd of
people of every station and age and sex--women, men, old men, boys,
infants, poor men and rich men, clad in raiment of every sort. I inquired
whither we were all running, whereupon one of the multitude answered that
we were all hastening on to death. I was greatly terrified at these words,
when I perceived a mountain on my left hand. Then, having turned myself
round so that it stood on my right side, I grasped the vines (which, here
in the midst of the mountains and as far as the place wherein I stood,
were covered with dry leaves, and bare of grapes, as we commonly see them
in autumn) and began to ascend. At first I found this difficult, for the
reason that the mountain was very steep round the base, but having
surmounted this I made my way upward easily. When I had come to the summit
it seemed that I was like to pass beyond the dictates of my own will.
Steep naked rocks appeared on every side, and I narrowly escaped falling
down from a great height into a gloomy chasm. So dreadful is all this that
now, what though forty years have rolled away, the memory thereof still
saddens and terrifies me. Then, having turned towards the right where I
could see naught but a plain covered with heath, I took that path out of
fear, and, as I wended thither in reckless mood, I found that I had come
to the entrance of a rude hut, thatched with straw and reeds and rushes,
and that I held by my right hand a boy about twelve years of age and clad
in a grey garment. Then at this very moment I was aroused from sleep, and
my dream vanished.
"In this vision was clearly displayed the deathless name which was to be
mine, my life of heavy and ceaseless work, my imprisonment, my seasons of
grievous terror and sadness, and my abiding-place foreshadowed as
inhospitable, by the sharp stones I beheld: barren, by the want of trees
and of all serviceable plants; but destined to be, nevertheless, in the
end happy, and righteous, and easy. This dream told also of my lasting
fame in the future, seeing that the vine yields a harvest every year. As
to the boy, if he were indeed my good spirit, the omen was lucky, for I
held him very close. If he were meant to foreshadow my grandson it would
be less fortunate. That cottage in the desert was my hope of rest. That
overwhelming horror and the sense of falling headlong may have had
reference to the ruin of my son.[65]
"My second dream occurred a short time after. It seemed to me that my soul
was in the heaven of the moon, freed from the body and all alone, and when
I was bewailing my fate I heard the voice of my father, saying: 'God has
appointed me as a guardian to you. All this region is full of spirits, but
these you cannot see, and you must not speak either to me or to them. In
this part of heaven you will remain for seven thousand years, and for the
same time in certain other stars, until you come to the eighth. After
this you shall enter the kingdom of God.' I read this dream as follows. My
father's soul is my tutelary spirit. What could be dearer or more
delightful? The Moon signifies Grammar; Mercury Geometry and Arithmetic;
Venus Music, the Art of Divination, and Poetry; the Sun the Moral, and
Jupiter the Natural, World; Mars Medicine; Saturn Agriculture, the
knowledge of plants, and other minor arts. The eighth star stands for a
gleaning of all mundane things, natural science, and various other
studies. After dealing with these I shall at last find my rest with the
Prince of Heaven."[66]
FOOTNOTES:
[45] "Nec ullum mihi erat relictum auxilium nisi latrunculorum
Ludus."--_Opera_, tom. i. p. 619.
[46] From the formation of the League of Cambrai in 1508 to the
establishment of the Imperial supremacy in Italy in 1530, the whole
country was desolated by the marching and counter-marching of the
contending forces. Milan, lying directly in the path of the French armies,
suffered most of all.
[47] Compare _De Vita Propria_, chaps. iv. and xxxi. pp. 13 and 92.
[48] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xxxi. p. 92. In taking the other view he
writes: "Vitam ducebam in Saccensi oppido, ut mihi videbar,
infelicissime."--_Opera_, tom. i. p. 97.
[49] _De Utilitate_, p. 235.
[50] He gives a long and interesting sketch of his father-in-law in _De
Utilitate_, p. 370.
[51] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xxvi. p. 68; _Opera_, tom. i. p. 97.
[52] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xli. p. 149.
[53] _De Utilitate_, p. 350.
[54] _De Utilitate_, p. 357: "Nam in urbe nec collegium recipere volebat
nec cum aliquo ex illis artem exercere licebat et sine illis difficillimum
erat." He writes thus while describing this particular visit to Milan.
[55] Ill fortune seems to have pursued the whole family in their relations
with learned societies. "Nam et pater meus ut ab eo accepi, diu in
ingressu Collegii Jurisconsultorum laboravit, et ego, ut alias testatus
sum, bis a medicorum Patavino, toties filius meus natu major, a Ticinensi,
uterque a Mediolanensi rejecti sumus."--_Opera_, tom. i. p. 94.
[56] _De Utilitate_, p. 358.
[57] He became a priest, and died Archbishop of Milan in 1552. Cardan
dedicated to him his first published book, _De Malo Medendi_.
[58] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xxxvii. p. 119.
[59] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xxv. p. 67.
[60] The Xenodochium, which was originally a stranger's lodging-house. By
this time places of this sort had become little else than _succursales_ of
some religious house. The Governors of the Milanese Xenodochium were the
patrons of the Plat endowment which Cardan afterwards enjoyed.
[61] "Hoc unum sat scio, ab ineunte ætate me inextinguibili nominis
immortalis cupiditate flagrasse."--_Opera_, tom. i. p. 61.
[62] "Minimo tamen honorario, et illud etiam minimum suasu cujusdam amici
egregii praefecti Xenodochii imminuerunt; ita cum hujus recordor in mentem
venit fabellæ illius Apuleii de annonæ Praefecto."--_Opera_, tom. i. p.
64.
[63] _De Utilitate_, p. 351.
[64] The following gives a hint as to the treatment followed: "Referant
leprosos balneo ejus aquae in qua cadaver ablutum sit, sanari."--_De
Varietate_, p. 334.
[65] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xxxvii. p. 121. This dream is also told in _De
Libris Propriis_, Opera, tom. i. p. 64.
[66] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xxxvii. p. 121.