184 JEROME CARDAN. 



exchequer and the informer. This we assure by the 

 present document, which we have commanded to be au- 

 thenticated by the impression of our seal. Given at 

 Milan, June 25, 1538." 



The year 1539, in which Jerome broke through the 

 barrier opposed to his career by the Milanese College of 

 Physicians, and also published his Practice of Arithmetic, 

 which made an easy way for him ever thereafter into the 

 long-sought Paradise of Print, ought to have been foretold 

 to him as a bright year by the stars, if Jupiter had been 

 indeed a conjuror, and Venus had had any right to be 

 regarded as a gipsy. According to his own horoscope, 

 however, Jerome in that year was not very far from death, 

 nor was the world likely to lose much at his decease, if 

 Cheiromancy spoke the truth in calling him a dunce. His 

 head, however, confuted the testimony of his hand. The 

 Practice of Arithmetic, finding its way both into France 

 and Germany, commended its author to the respect of 

 many strangers, and the notification at the end happily 

 produced in one quarter the right effect. To the neglected 

 scholar of Milan there was sent from Nuremberg the offer 

 of Joannes Petreius to print any work which he might be 

 disposed to entrust to him for publication. The offer was 

 transmitted by a learned man of the same town, Andreas 

 Osiander, who undertook to watch through the press, and 

 take careful charge, as local editor, of any work written 



