78 JEROME CARDAN. 



the dagger-thrust in friendly part and bore no malice, for 

 there is a sequel to the story. 



On the same day, while Cardan was wandering about, 

 with arms under his clothes, endeavouring to avoid the 

 wrath of the chief magistrate for his assault upon a 

 senator, after dark his feet slipped and he fell into one of 

 the canals. By clinging, in his struggle, to the oars of a 

 passing boat, he obtained rescue at the hands of the 

 rowers, and was dragged on board. He found on board 

 his adversary, with a fillet round his face, who covered 

 him not with reproaches, but with a dry suit of his own 

 clothes. 



After he had dwelt two years in Sacco, Cardan, never 

 strong in health, was attacked by tertian fever, ending, 

 however, on the seventh day. A year afterwards, in 1529, 

 there being a slight remission of the plague and tumult 

 in Milan, Jerome, summoned by letters from his mother 1 , 

 returned to his own town, and there endeavoured to 

 obtain his enrolment among the members of the College 

 of Physicians. But the old stain of illegitimacy clung 

 still to him in the company of those men who had known 

 him as a boy. The respectable body of the physicians of 

 Milan would admit no bastard into their society, and they 

 rejected him, upon a suspicion of illegitimacy based, as 

 its victim tells us, upon the ill-treatment he had expe- 

 1 De Consol. p. 75. 



