PAVIA QUITTED. 73 



cation of his eldest son, and of the young relative, 

 Gaspar, who studied with him. Gaspar having ob- 

 tained his degree, finally went to Rome and practised 

 physic. Gian Battista had only to go through the requi- 

 site formalities which should obtain for him admission 

 into the profession. Cardan, therefore, by retiring from 

 a profitless and dangerous post, hoped to indulge himself 

 with what seemed to be at that stage of his life the most 

 desirable thing literary leisure, and to increase and yet 

 more firmly to establish his great fame by assiduity in 

 writing. 



"With these hopes, Jerome, at the end of the year 

 1551, abandoned his professorship in Pavia and went 

 to Milan, not intending to remain there. It is pro- 

 bable that he was coward enough to desire a quiet and 

 safe place in which to enjoy the literary leisure upon 

 which his heart was set, and as the King of France sent 

 war out into other countries, there was chance that he had 

 none at home. There might be peace for him in Paris, 

 and, perhaps, prosperity. He may have desired at any 

 rate to go to France and try the ground there. I do not 

 know from his own telling that he was actuated by these 

 motives. He himself says no more than that, after quit- 

 ting Pavia, he had meant to go to France, even if he had 

 no business to take him thither 1 . Having that design, 

 then, he went back to Milan. 



1 De Vita Propria, p. 18. 



