THROBS OF THE HEART 25 



It was at the time when, as Jerome tells us, the first 

 down was coming on his chin 1 , that the premature death 

 of a young relative, Nicolo Cardan, gave a fixed object 

 to the tumult of his thoughts. Nicolo died at the age of 

 thirty 3 , and his place knew him no more. The young 

 philosopher began, therefore, to reflect upon the shortness 

 of life, and to inquire by what means he might be able to 

 provide something worthy to be remembered by posterity ; 

 it pained him to think that, after a life spent without 

 pleasure in the flesh, he should go down into the grave 

 and be forgotten 2 . When he had recovered from the 

 terror into which he had been thrown by witnessing the 

 young man's death, he occupied himself in the writing of 

 a treatise On the Earning of Immortality 2 . 



The sense of power, without which no genius can bear 

 fruit, was rooted firmly in Cardan. The slights and sor- 

 rows that had made the outer world in childhood and in 

 youth seem vanity, had driven him to contemplation of 

 that inner world from which there was no pleasant voice 

 to call his thoughts. Self-contemplation, constantly pro- 

 voked and never checked, acquired a feverish intensity. 

 After the death of his friend Nicolo, when Jerome, with 

 warm passions, found himself at home but half a son, and 



1 " Cum adhuc ephebus essem." De Sapientia Libri V. &c. &c. (ed. 

 Norimb. 1543) p. 420. 



2 De Libris Propriis (ed. Lugd. 1557), p. 10. 



