130 JEKOME CARDAN. 



object of consideration among rival princes, had for two 

 years lived in a bilious, melancholic state, afflicted with a 

 skin-disease, and unrelieved by the advice of the most dis- 

 tinguished Milanese physicians. Jerome, when first ad- 

 mitted to attend upon the monks, found the prior cherish- 

 ing despondent, though unfortunately distant, hopes of 

 a release by death from all his fleshly troubles. By the 

 good advice, however, of the young physician, or perhaps 

 only by good fortune, Gaddi recovered. In six months 

 he was well, and he was the first man of any note upon 

 whom Jerome had been allowed to exercise his art. 



Prior Francisco Gaddi belonged to a famous family in 

 Florence, founded by three generations of painters 

 Gaddo Gaddi, who worked in the thirteenth century; 

 Taddeo, his son; and his grandsons, Agnolo and Gio- 

 vanni, in the fourteenth. The continuous labours of 

 those men procured for their house wealth and fame, so 

 that they left to their heirs a palace richly stocked with 

 works of art, and a distinguished place among the noble 

 families of Florence. A Francisco Gaddi was, in 1493, 

 the Secretary of the Florentine Republic. The Prior 

 Gaddi, settled at Milan, did not cease to be grateful to his 

 health-bringing physician, though it was in his power to 

 give him very little worldly help. Nor was it in Cardan's 

 power to administer more potent aid to the scheming and 

 ambitious monk in his last illness than a consolatory 



