THE THREE CHILDREN. 27 



by her good conduct, she had become justly entitled. 

 Aldo Urbano, the last born, who had come into the world 

 under a most flattering configuration of the planets, to 

 whom the stars promised lavishly talents and all their most 

 glittering rewards, grew up a clever child, but a decided 

 scapegrace. By his mother he had been known only as 

 an object of solicitude. He had been born on the 25th 

 of May, in the year 1543, three years before Lucia's 

 death, and during those three years he had been afflicted, 

 first with convulsions, then with dysentery, then with 

 what his father called an abscess in the brain ; also with 

 six months of fever. He was three years old before he 

 learned to walk. He grew, however, into better health, 

 and under irregular training in a house not free from the 

 rattle of dice, and too much visited by men of low intel- 

 lect and morals, whom Jerome himself despised while he 

 took pleasure in their voices, the quick boy learnt evil 

 ways. Cardan confesses and deplores the hurt that he did 

 to his children by the bad example that he set in his own 

 house 1 . They felt none of the toils from which the hard- 

 working philosopher came for relaxation to the dice-table, 

 or to that refreshment of music which could then hardly 

 be attained except in company with men who were, for 

 all other faculties that they possessed, to be despised and 

 shunned. To the children, Jerome's hours in the study 

 1 De Vita Propria, p. 62. 



