2 JEROME CAKDAN. 



jurisconsult and mathematician, who was, at that time, 

 probably as much an object of aversion to her as the 

 plague itself his name was Fazio Cardan 1 . 



Fazio Cardan was a man of note among the learned in 

 his neighbourhood, and was then fifty-six years of age 3 . 

 At the age of fifty-six he had already become toothless, 

 although strong of limb and ruddy of complexion. He 

 had good eyes; not in the sense of "Being beautiful, for 

 they were white, but in the sense of being useful ; for it 

 was said that he could see with them in the night time. 

 To his last days to the age of eighty Fazio Cardan 

 continued to see objects clearly with the aid of less light 

 than his neighbours needed, and required no spectacles. 

 As a doctor, both in law and medicine, and member of 

 the venerable college of men skilled in law, the white- 

 eyed, toothless, stuttering, and round-shouldered mathe- 

 matician clothed his healthy body in a purple robe. He 

 wore a black skull-cap, which he dared only remove for a 

 few minutes at a time, because his skull had suffered 



1 "... natus essem Papise, grassante in urbe nostra peste, turn 

 etiam quod mater partum ipsum occultari volebat, nee illius affines 

 resciscerent. Pater enim meus, ut Senex ac Jurisconsultus, viduse 

 Matris meae pauperis publicas nuptias aversabatur : ipsa vero turpe 

 ducebat, quod diceretur non ex coDJuge peperisse." De Libris Propriis. 

 Liber ultimus. Opera cura Spon. Vol. i. p. 96. Cardan never defames 

 his mother. 



2 He was born at twenty minutes to nine in the morning of the 16th 

 of July, 1445. See the date in his horoscope, Libelli V. De Suppl. 

 Almanach. &c. (ed. cit.) p. 106. 



