110 JEROME CARDAN. 



arrest of Aldobello, who was carried off one day in 

 chains. 



Again he was enveloped in the cloud of friends, and 

 his exculpation was by them and by himself made so 

 complete, that he came back to his own neighbourhood 

 taller than ever. He was supplied with three hundred 

 more harquebuses, and authorised to raise three hundred 

 more recruits from volunteers in and about Sacco. He 

 thus became a captain of five hundred ; and so well did he 

 perform his work with these, so earnestly did he enforce 

 the extended adoption of his plan in other districts, that 

 in no very long time Aldobello Bandarini was able to 

 boast that he had been the founder of a complete militia 

 system spread over the whole territory of Venice, and 

 adopted from the Venetian pattern in adjacent and even 

 in some distant states. He himself enjoyed the post of 

 Tribune of the Militia, and a threefold increase of his 

 monthly pay. 



Having attained this point in his career, he was again 

 burnt out of his abode, by the fire to which reference has 

 been made in a preceding chapter. The business of the 

 tribunate required a large house, and one night a boy 

 asleep in a weaver's shop belonging to the premises 

 upset a pan of burning charcoal with his foot. A confla- 

 gration was the consequence, destroying the whole house, 

 and for a long time threatening to devour also the houses 



