DEPTHS OF DISTRESS. 123 



poverty. After his son's birth, he struggled on against 

 adversity for five more months in Gallarate, and at the 

 end of that time gave up his position in the little 

 town, not upon deliberation but compulsion. He and 

 Lucia, in all the nineteen months 1 of their abode at Gal- 

 larate, had earned scarcely forty crowns 2 ; and when they 

 were at last reduced to absolute destitution, when he had 

 lost at the gaming-table his wife's jewels, even his bed, 

 they, having no other hope, determined on returning into 

 Milan. Not, said Cardan with touching brevity, that 

 there was anything to seek, but that there was something 

 from which to fly 3 . He determined to quit Gallarate 

 and plunge once more into Milan, as a man hemmed in 

 upon a barren rock resolves to cast himself into the sea. 



It was in October, 1534 4 , that Jerome, with his wife 

 and child, came back to Milan beggared, and applied for 

 shelter to the public Xenodochium 5 , the workhouse of his 



1 " Ubi raansi xix. mensibus." De Vita Propr. p. 19. He vent in 

 April, 1533, and returned to Milan in October, 1534. 



* De Vit. Propr. cap. xxr. p. 94. De Lib. Propr. Lib. ult. Opera, 

 Tom. i. p. 100. 



8 " .... non quod haberem quod sequerer, sed quod fugerem . . . ." 

 Ibid. 



4 " Quasi e scopulo inaccesso me prsecipitaturus in mare, decrevi in 

 patriam redire anno MD.XXXIV, mense Octobris." De Lib. Prop. (1557) 

 p. 23. 



5 Details and references on the subject of the Xenodochia may be 

 found in Zedler's Lexicon (Leipzig. 1749), vol. 60, col. 655 7. They 

 took their name, and some of their spirit, from the Greek institutions 

 dedicated Jovi Xenio. Much of their spirit was, however, purely 

 ecclesiastical ; they became sources of income to the clergy. 



