APHORISMS JEROME'S WIFE. 301 



ence ; the knowledge valued by the learned is that 

 which is obtained by reasoning from the effect up to the 

 cause. 



When you mean to wash, first see that you have a 

 towel handy." 



Jerome tells us that the occupations in his study served 

 to moderate the great sense of his love for wife and chil- 

 dren. We have now traced his career to the conclusion 

 of that long period of struggle with adversity which Lucia 

 had shared with him. She was not to take part in his 

 prosperity. The white-robed maiden who had tempted 

 him to marriage had been a true wife to him for sixteen 

 years. She had left a home in which there was no want, 

 to starve with him in Milan, to struggle with him in Gal- 

 larate, to bear with him the scoffs of neighbours, to sus- 

 tain his spirit in a thousand hours of sorrow. She must 

 have shed her woman's tears over the loss of those jewels 

 and those bits of bridal finery that had paid gambling 

 debts, or been converted into bread. But she had not 

 been weak. She was brave, says her husband, and of 

 indomitable spirit ; gentle, affectionate, and rather good- 

 looking 1 . While Jerome laboured with his pen, she had 

 spent anxious days in meditations upon dinner, and in the 

 rearing of her children, when adversity hung as a heavy 

 cloud over the house. But with the cloud she also was 

 1 Geniturarum Exemplar (ed. Lugd. 1555), p. 113. 



