304 JEROME CARDAN. 



was thirteen years old ; the girl Clara was eleven ; and 

 Aldo, the younger boy, was four. Delicate charge for a 

 busy and eccentric student ! Cardan's own mother was 

 dead ; but there remained to the children still their 

 grandmother Bandarini, the Thaddsea before mentioned, 

 who, when her daughter died, had survived by fifteen 

 years her husband Aldobello. She, while she lived, 

 occupied imperfectly the mother's place in Jerome's 

 household 1 . 



Had Lucia lived on, how different the future might 

 have been ! The terrible calamity that cannot be 

 averted now, might then never have crushed her hus- 

 band's heart. They might have taken delight together 

 in the great fame of the philosopher, with which during 

 his own lifetime all Europe was to ring, and while 

 the note of triumph was resounding out of doors, there 

 might have been other voices murmuring about the walls 

 of home than the dull echoes of the mourning of a very 

 desolate old man. 



1 De VitaPropria, cap. xxvii. p. 99. 



END OF VOL. I. 



C. WHITING, BEAUFORT HOUSE, STRAND. 



