8 JEROME CARDAN. 



seized by the plague, and died under its touch in a few 

 hours 1 . The infant did not pass unscathed, for there 

 appeared at the same time five carbuncles on its face; one 

 on the nose, the other four arranged around it in the 

 pattern of a cross. Although healing in a short time, it 

 was observed that three years afterwards these carbuncles 

 appeared again in the same places 3 . Deprived of his 

 nurse, and little aided by his mother, the son of Fazio 

 Cardan was received into the house of Isidore dei Resti 3 , 

 a noble gentleman, his father's friend. At that time the 

 geometer was burying in Milan all his other children 

 dead of plague. They were two boys and a girl, half- 

 brothers and half-sister to Clara's child 4 . In the house 

 of Isidore, the survivor says, speaking of the past out of 

 his after-life, and tincturing his words with the bitter- 

 ness of many griefs, " After a few days I fell sick of a 

 dropsy and flux of the liver, yet nevertheless was pre- 



* De Propr. Vit. cap. iv. p. 12. 



2 The page last cited and De Ut. ex Adv. Cap. p. 427. 



a De Propr. Vit. p. 13. De Ut. ex Adv. Cap. p. 427. 



4 De Consolatione (ed. Ven. 1542), p. 74. Their names were 

 Thomas, Ambrose, and Catilina. De Ut. ex Adv. Cap. p. 427. The 

 passage in the De Consolatione, "jam trimestris duos fratres et unam 

 sororem perdidi : crassante in civitate nostra pestilentia . . . tune 

 audaci et pio facto Is. Kestse nobilis viri et amici paterni, manibus ejus 

 inter funera exceptus . . ." is my only textual authority for attributing 

 these children to Fazio. It is indecisive, and I may be wrong. They 

 may have been children left as consolations to the widow. If so, Clara 

 must have married very early. Had they belonged equally to Fazio 

 and Clara, one does not see why in the case of Jerome his mother 



