268 JEBOME CARDAN. 



sures of the table, the ill-humoured young mathematician 

 quitted abruptly his not very dignified position as a re- 

 tainer. Then retiring into independence, he built for 

 himself a house, in which he went to live with his sister, 

 Maddalena, orphan and widow, whom he truly loved. We 

 shall meet with him hereafter, teaching mathematics at 

 Bologna ; but it is expedient to complete the sketch of his 

 career by adding in this place, that he died suddenly and 

 prematurely, at the age of thirty-eight, in the first year 

 of his professorship, as it was said by poison. Nearly all 

 sudden deaths did in those days of ignorance prompt 

 rumours about poison ; but in this case there was some 

 colour given to the rumour by the fact that his sister 

 the one person towards whom his wayward heart had 

 really turned in love inherited his property, scorned to 

 lament at his funeral, married fifteen days after his death, 

 and at once gave all his money, goods, and chattels, to 

 her husband. That reads like the sequel to a wild story 

 of Italian passion. But the sequel is not there. The 

 sequel is, that Maddalena lived to be repudiated by the 

 man to whom she gave her own soul and her brother's 

 wealth. When Cardan wrote the brief sketch that he 

 has left of the career of his old pupil, she was a miserable 

 old woman, living in the country in a state of abject 

 poverty, unpitied and unaided by the man whom her 

 guilt, as it was suspected, had enriched. Ferrari left no 



