56 JEROME CARDAN. 



own relations for a judge, and compelled him, after a long 

 struggle, to pay all the money about which a question had 

 arisen. The dispute with the Barbiani was continued 

 over many years 1 . 



To Clara Micheria there remained also, after the death 

 of Fazio, so much provision for her maintenance as would 

 enable her to buy a house 2 . She could also in some way 

 earn money, for it was by her industry and solicitude 

 incredible solicitude her son entitles it that Jerome, when 

 left by the death of his father poor and helpless, was main- 

 tained at the university 3 . It does not appear that Jerome 

 and his mother were at all times happy in each other, but 

 that Clara, notwithstanding all her sins of temper or of 

 principle, had a woman's power of self-sacrifice, and a 

 mother's strength of love for Jerome, is what I think does 

 appear, not indistinctly. Towards his father, Jerome's 

 heart yearned many years after the old man had passed 

 away, when the son could look back into his youth, for- 

 getting for a time its deprivations, remembering only the 

 gentle words and deeds of the geometrician, who had, he 

 thought, been kinder to him than his mother. Of him he 

 could then write, when the feeling rose naturally in his 

 heart, words of emotion full of a love and gentleness, with 



1 Dial, de Morte. Opera, Tom. i. p. 676. 



2 De Vit. Propr. p. 92. 



3 " Ipse inops, ac auxilio omni destitutus, diligentia et solicitudine 

 matris incredibili sustentabar." Dial, de Morte. Opera, Tom. i.p. 676. 



