DICE. A LOST LEGACY. 29 



games of chance. The idea was a shrewd one, and the 

 execution of it curiously brought into play all the charac- 

 teristic features of its author's life. It displayed much 

 of the knowledge he had acquired from the old geome- 

 trician Fazio, the philosophic powers that had grown 

 and strengthened in the midst of all misfortune and 

 neglect, and the love of dice that represented the im- 

 patient and ill-regulated spirit that so much want of 

 sympathy had by this time begotten. 



We who have seen the growth of this one child from 

 the knees of its hired mothers, and the hand of its hard 

 Aunt Margaret, up to a youth of galling servitude, refuse 

 to be harsh judges now. If we could trace back the stories 

 of the men who sin against us or before us in the world, 

 perhaps we should refuse to be harsh judges ever. There 

 is no truth in scorn, and there is no sadder aspect in the 

 life of Jerome Cardan than the feeling which impelled 

 him to say, " I have lived to myself, and in some hope of 

 future things I have despised the present." 



A rare example of the contempt of things present was 

 offered during Jerome's youth by Fazio, his father. Fazio, 

 who was, it should be remembered, seventy- four years old 

 when his son's age was eighteen, had two nephews, sister's 

 sons, little younger than himself; and of these, one was a 

 Franciscan friar, and the other a tax-gatherer; one a 

 Pharisee, the other a publican. The friar, seventy years 



