JEROME IN WKATII. 231 



Signer the Marquis, thinking you capable of more cour- 

 teous recognition, more refined, more gentlemanly, and 

 more competent than Messer Zuanna as you allege your- 

 self to be, but I see little difference between one and 

 the other ; if there be any you have not shown it. 

 Now to come to facts, I accuse you upon four important 

 points. 



The first is, that you said my questions were not mine, 

 but belonged to Messer Zuanne Colle; as if you would 

 have it that there is no man in Milan able to put such 

 questions. My master, clever men are not discovered by 

 their questions, as you think, but by their answers ; 

 therefore you have been guilty of very grave presump- 

 tion. There are many in Milan who know them ; and I 

 knew them before Messer Zuanne knew how to count 

 ten, if he be as young as he would make himself. 



The second is, that you told the bookseller that if one 

 of the questions of Master Antonio Maria could be 

 solved, all mine would be solved. I ask you, for mercy's 

 sake, with whom you think that you are speaking ? 

 With your pupils, or with men ? Where did you ever 

 find that the discovery of the root pronica media 1 , which 

 lies at the bottom of the solution of all the thirty ques- 

 tions of Master Antonio Maria, which is founded on the 



1 "Doue trovasti noi mai che la inyentione de la radice pronica 

 media, la quale e il fondainento de . . . . posse essere la resolutione 

 d'una questione di cubo c numero equal a censo." 



