LIFE AT SACCO. 75 



many weeks after his marriage. He had enjoyed fairly 

 his student life, but to the years spent at Sacco he 

 looked back often afterwards. They contracted in his 

 memory into a single happy thought, a thought to which, 

 at night, his pleasant dreams frequently led him. 



lie studied while at Sacco indolently, or at any rate 

 his study produced small immediate results. During the 

 six years spent there his mind was at work, but that was 

 a period rather of growth than produce. Cardan himself 

 says, discontentedly, " During all the six years that I 

 practised my art in that town, with great labour I pro- 

 duced but little profit to myself, much less to others." 

 (Yet he was by no means wholly without practice 1 .) " I 

 was impeded by crude thoughts and restless studies, my 

 wit not working smoothly or to good effect 2 ." His writ- 

 ten work during that period, except an essay upon Chei- 

 romancy, an art in which Cardan had more faith than a 

 modern gipsy, was entirely medical. It consisted of 

 three hundred sheets, upon the Method of Healing ; a 

 treatise to the extent of thirty -six sheets, on the epidemic 

 that prevailed in his neighbourhood during the whole 

 time of his residence at Sacco ; a treatise on the Plague. 

 The treatise on the Plague was lost, and there were two 

 other treatises destroyed also by the misdeed of a cat, 



1 De Consolatione, p. 75. 



3 De Libris Propriis. Liber ultimus. Opera, Tom. L p. 97. 



