PREPARATORY TRAINING. 45 



woman's appreciation of such matters, Jerome had also 

 received instruction in music, which, as a social amuse- 

 ment, consisted in those days chiefly of part singing and 

 choruses. This Clara had furnished to her son without 

 his father's knowledge 1 . Fazio himself, who had no lack 

 of power for facetious conversation, and was great among 

 his friends as a teller of anecdotes, fables, and marvels of 

 all kinds, being particularly full of stories about demons 2 , 

 and claiming an especial demon of his own, aided the con- 

 stant growth of superstitious feeling in the apt mind of his 

 pupil. Other things Jerome had learnt for his own plea- 

 sure. With his father's help he had become so well versed 

 in dialectics, that before he went to Pavia he earned some 

 pocket-money for himself by giving private lessons in that 

 study 3 . Of Latin he knew no more than he had acquired 

 in conversation with his father ; but to write Latin, as I 

 have said before, was the great object of his young desired 

 At Pavia, Cardan was placed under the care of Giovanni 

 Ambrosio Targio, in whose house he resided without any 

 companion. At the close of the academic year he re- 

 turned to Milan. He- had made good use of time, for in 

 the succeeding year after his return to Pavia, where he 



1 De Ut. ex Adv. Cap. p. 429. 



2 " Conversatio sua baud aspernanda, facetus, jucundus, miraculomm 

 et fabularum recitator, multa de daemonibus recitabat, qure quam vera 

 essent nescio, certe ea historia et admirabilis et pulchre conficta, 

 mirum in modum me oblectabat." De Ut. ex Adv. Cap. p. 429. 



3 Ibid. 



