114 JEROME CAKDAN. 



scattered fragments over Aldobello's bedroom. Ever 

 afterwards his mind recurred with horror to that evil 

 omen ; but ever after was not a long time, for he died 

 before the year was ended. He died with another and a 

 deeper grief upon him, caused by the wicked life of one 

 of his own sons. 



Cardan, when he returned to Milan, felt the want of 

 his father-in-law's tact in winning good opinions that 

 could be turned to gold. Still he had no friends, except 

 the few who had become acquainted with his genius 

 men who knew how the young physician, so excitable, so 

 superstitious, and so often seen indulging in a restless 

 love of dice, spent solitary hours in abstruse study, 

 cherished great thoughts, wrote books out of the pure 

 instinct of the scholar, having no reason to believe that 

 he could ever get them printed, and lived on in the 

 unwavering conviction that he had within him power to 

 secure immortal fame. Still the decorous college of the 

 Milanese physicians shut their gates upon him 1 . He 

 was notoriously excluded from their body, and denied 

 the right of practising legitimately, because he had not 

 been legitimately born. Trouble weighed heavily upon 

 him: poverty, nervous irritation, and the foul air of a 

 town then never entirely free from plague, weakened 

 still more the health of the young husband. His wife, 

 1 De Libris Propriis (1557), p. 13, 



