2 JEROME CARDAN. 



was great as a physician. He was to suffer no more 

 poverty. He desired to work in peace, and keep all 

 danger at a distance. Throughout his life he abstained 

 wholly from political disputes that were very profitless, a 

 fertile source of trouble, and of risk that he was quite 

 coward enough to shun ; they would, moreover, clog his 

 labour for the acquisition of a lasting name. The man 

 behind whom he could shelter himself best against all 

 enemies who could best cause his property and time and 

 life to be respected was the governor of the province; 

 his favour, therefore, the philosopher sought, and as he 

 had obtained D'Avalos for a cordial patron, so also he 

 desired the friendship of his less worthy successor. Gon- 

 zaga had, indeed, no taste for the society of learned men, 

 but he could be taught to reckon the well-known physi- 

 cian among friendly citizens over whose lives and liberties 

 he would be properly disposed to watch, and in those 

 days of anarchy that was, in Jerome's case, a point worth 

 gaining. 



While the Professor of Medicine was writing indefati- 

 gably at Milan, during the year of absence from his duties 

 in the university of Pavia, the year of his wife's death, 

 there was a brilliant offer 1 made to him, which he refused. 

 The friendship of the Cardinal Sfondrato had confirmed 



1 Details on this subject are given in De Vita Propr. cap. iv. De 

 Libris Propriis (1557), p. 23. 



