COUNT BOEROMEO'S CHILD. 153 



But he predicted to the mother the boy's death. Other 

 physicians who were summoned spoke more hopefully, 

 and after the death had really taken place, gratified their 

 jealous dislike by secretly asserting that the mathema- 

 tician had not understood the boy's complaint. They 

 were unable, however, to say that his medicine had been 

 of a kind to cause or hasten any fatal issue. So he 

 avoided, through attention to the warning dream, great 

 danger to himself, because if Count Borromeo had 

 believed that the loss of his one child was caused by 

 a prescription, he would certainly have killed the doctor 

 who had written it. Many indeed 'at that time heard so 

 much ill spoken of Cardan, that it appeared to them 

 as though it would be but a just thing to kill him, if 

 the law were not so undiscriminating as to protect even 

 lives like his. Borromeo never ceased to alleviate his 

 grief for his lost child by curses loud, frequent, and 

 public, upon his physician. As for the general public of 

 Milan, it had come to the conclusion that the Plat 

 lecturer was mad, through poverty. 



The luckless author, greatly vexed at the large number 

 of misprints which had disfigured his first publication, 



dum quatuor passibus ab ostio aberat, dico deesse quippiam quod addere 

 vellem, lacero priusfactum, clam, et aliud scribo e margaritis, osse 

 monocerotis, gemrais. Datur pulvis evomit," &c. De Vita Propria, 

 p. 148. For some of the details in the text, see also De Libris Propriis 

 (1537), p. 31, and Synesiorum Somniorum, Lib. IT, cap. 4. Opera, 

 Tom. v. p. 724. 



