A DINNER PARTY. 105 



of mathematics, and a bustling man. He came to see me 

 daily. He, being physician to the monks of St. Dionysius, 

 took us to their noble church, distant about three miles 

 from Paris, and famed throughout the whole world. 

 There, when we had seen the sepulchres of kings, statues, 

 and other marble ornaments, I studied carefully the horn 

 of an unicorn that was suspended in the church 1 . He 

 handled it and measured it, and he describes it carefully. 

 More than once he refers to it. In another passage he 

 records that, among the king's treasures in the church of 

 St. Dionysius, there was nothing that appeared to him so 

 precious as that rare and perfect horn. 



Aimar de Ranconet was another of the eminent men in 

 Paris by whom Cardan was particularly welcomed, and with 

 him Jerome had correspondence after his departure. He was 

 a lawyer by profession, but remarkably well versed in polite 

 literature, philosophy, and mathematics. He was President 

 of the Fourth Chamber of Accounts in the Parliament of 

 Paris, and a student with a system. After a light supper, 

 he would sleep for a few hours, and rising in the night at 

 about the time when the monks' prayer bell was sounding, 



rescue here when other help all failed, told me the real name of this 

 gentleman. The barbarous Latinising of the names of persons and 

 places, as of Hamilton into Amultho, Fernel into Pharnelius, the Sim- 

 ploii into Mons Sempronius, Duomo d'Ossolo into Dondosola, when 

 any obscure person or place is the subject of it, makes a riddle. 

 1 De Varietate Rerum (ed. Bas. 1557), p. 672. 



