156 JEROME CARDAN. 



tracts, and began a work on the Arcana of Eternity, de- 

 signing thereby to please the Marquis Avalos, a governor 

 of Milan, who had shown some friendliness towards the 

 poor wise man whom so few heeded. 



Alphonso d' Avalos 1 , Marchese del Guasto, was another 

 of the young and clever men who could recognise and 

 enjoy the vigour of a genius that repelled the prim and 

 vulgar by its eccentricities. He was a year younger than 

 Cardan, the son of Inigo d' Avalos, and going early out to 

 war was, at the age of twenty-one, present at the battle of 

 Bicoque. From the subsequent contests in the Milanese, 

 to which reference has been made often in preceding 

 pages, he had been rarely or never absent. After the 

 death of Antonio Seva he had been appointed general 



1 I have seen it somewhere stated that there is a MS. life of this 

 D' Avalos in one of the Italian libraries, I think at Florence. In a note 

 appended to his name in Roscoe's memoirs of Cellini, it is said that he 

 was " the son of the great Ferdinando d' Avalos, Marquis of Pescara." 

 In the Biographic Universelle he is called his nephew. Ferdinand was 

 his cousin. The first of the family it belonged to Navarre who came 

 to Italy, was Inigo, first of the name. He following Alphonso V. of 

 Arragon to Naples, married a sister of the Marquis Pescara, who hap- 

 pened to be heir to his estates. In this way he acquired great wealth and 

 a new title. Of the three sons of that couple, one died single, and two, 

 Alphonso and Inigo II., married. " The great Ferdinand" was the son 

 of Alphonso, and inherited through him the title of Pescara. The 

 Avalos connected with the life of Cardan was the son of Inigo II., and 

 inherited from him the Marquisate del Guasto. See Imhof Geneal- 

 Ital. et Hisp. and the article on the Avalos family in Zedler's Universal 

 Lexicon oiler Wissenschaften und Kilnste, vol. ii. col. 20938. This 

 old German Lexicon is a repertory of minute facts and references to 

 authorities concerning half-forgotten things and people, through which 

 I have had easy access to much valuable information. 



