48 JEROME CARDAN. 



one day in May, between the hours of three and five in 

 the afternoon, when he had dropped asleep, because it 

 happened to be Sunday, he dreamt that he had married 

 a second wife, and was reproaching Lucia with the fact 

 that his new wife was quieter than she had been. Lucia, 

 who stood by, replied to him only with sad looks and 

 silence. The new wife soon disappeared, Lucia remain- 

 ing. That phantom was the only second wife taken by 

 the philosopher, who held stepmothers in dread, and 

 frequently warned fathers against them, quoting even, 

 in one place, the harsh line 



Lurida terribiles miscent aconita noyercae. 

 He did not marry again in the flesh. The second wife 

 of his dream having disappeared speedily, and Lucia re- 

 maining, whom he knew to be dead, she asked him for 

 five masses ; then she touched him, willing to be touched, 

 and having touched him, fastened a label on his forehead, 

 which he bore unwillingly, because he feared its import, 

 and it soon fell off. Then it appeared to him that his 

 mother came to them, and although she also was dead, 

 and had died, indeed, ten years before his wife, he thought 

 her to be living. And lo ! between the two dead women 

 stood his eldest son ! They had between them Gianbattista, 

 not as he then was, a youth of sixteen, but as he had been 

 when he was a child of seven years old. Jerome feared 

 that Lucia would take her son away with her into the 



