DEPARTURE FROM SACCO. 113 



overcome the hostility of the college and secure a footing 

 for himself. He found then also his mother miserable 

 and morose, lamenting her widowhood, and sulking over 

 the discomforts she endured. Fatigue and disappoint- 

 ment brought him on that occasion to the gates of death. 

 After seven months of deadly sickness, he had returned 

 with broken health and broken hopes to Sacco. Now, 

 however, he would try Milan again. The college could 

 not be for ever obdurate, and he might live down the 

 objection to his birth. Very soon after their marriage, 

 therefore, Jerome and his wife, in February, 1532 1 , re- 

 moved to Milan. Jerome was then infirm in health, but 

 his mother, Clara, had become, by that time, prosperous 

 and cheerful 3 . 



The tribune, however, had expected nothing less than 

 the departure of his son-in-law from Sacco. He sub- 

 mitted to the disappointment he experienced on this ac- 

 count with outward equanimity, but he was deeply 

 grieved at heart. His regard for " the daughter of his 

 good luck" was of a superstitious kind 3 . A few days 

 before she quitted Sacco with her husband, a stone, put 

 upon the fire by accident, cracked with a loud noise, and 



1 De Libris Propr. (ed. 1557) p. 13. " Valetudinarius, pauperque." 

 The date is there misprinted 1533, but the correction is obvious enough. 



2 "In patriam denuo re versus, sospitem matrem inveni." De Con- 

 sol, p. 75. 



3 De Ut. ex Adv. Cap. p. 452. 



VOL. I. I 



