74 JEROME CARDAN. 



CHAPTER IV. 



CARDAN'S JOURNEY TO PARIS. 



BY the end of November in the same year a letter 1 

 reached Cardan through the hands of merchants. It had 

 been about two months upon the road, the messenger by 

 whom it was despatched having been hindered in his 

 progress through a country thoroughly confused with war. 

 This epistle contained matters of importance, and came 

 from a brother physician, who talked in a most edifying 

 way the science of his time, and seems to have been a 

 perfect master of the ponderous scholastic style. I have 

 not space here, and no reader would have patience, for the 

 whole of Dr. Cassanate's composition; shortened, how- 

 ever, by the omission of a few masses of surplus ver- 

 biage, it must now form a portion of this narrative. How 

 great would be the consternation of an active literary man 



1 De Libris Propriis (1557). The letter itself is given in the same 

 work, and extends there from page 159 to page 175. 



