26 JEROME CARDAN. 



The young Gaspar had been entrusted to him by another 

 Cardan of the same name, one of the relations who re- 

 membered him in his prosperity. Jerome had a great 

 many relations on his father's side, for the Cardans, as 

 before said, were long-lived and moderately prolific. 

 There was even a second Jerome Cardan 1 , also a physi- 

 cian, who, when Jerome the philosopher was at Pavia, 

 had established for himself a low practice in Milan, where 

 he curried favour with the druggists, and became a 

 thriving man. He will not again be mentioned in these 

 pages. 



Grian Battista, Jerome's eldest son 3 , was studious and 

 quiet, but he had, like his father, some strong passions, 

 and was aided less by example than by precept in the 

 regulation of his mind. Clara was a good girl, of 

 strong constitution ; she had not been without maternal 

 training, and after her mother's death was guided by 

 her grandmother Thaddaea. Her father's oddities lay 

 quite out of her sphere ; she was a good daughter, 

 and when she became marriageable, married. In her 

 whole life she gave no trouble to her father more than 

 belonged to the payment of her dowry; that he gave 

 ungrudgingly as a home debt, to the payment of which, 



1 Synesiorum Somniorum (ed. Bas. 1562), p. 262. 



2 The account here given of Jerome's children is taken from state- 

 ments made by him in his last essay on his own horoscope and the 

 horoscopes of his household, in the Geniturarum Exemplar. 



