106 JEROME CARDAN. 



put on a studying dress, not unlike a monastic robe, and 

 go to work. So he studied for four hours, profiting by the 

 silence of the night, and a stomach loaded, he said, with no 

 greater excess of humidity than could be spat away out of 

 his mouth. Then he returned to bed and worked again 

 after the second waking. A few scholarly and liberal words 

 spoken in parliament not very long after Cardan's depar- 

 ture caused Ranconet to be shut up in the Bastile on a 

 foul and absurd charge : there he died. His daughter, 

 it is said, died on a dunghill, his son was hung, and Ms 

 wife struck by lightning. 



Of all the men that he saw in Paris, President Ran- 

 conet 1 was the one who won most on Cardan's affections. 

 He admired the immense store of his books, but he dwells 

 most on the acuteness and the liberality of his character ; 

 he would despise none for poverty, contemn none for rude 

 speech, but judged them wisely and humanely by their 

 dispositions. " Then, said I to myself," Jerome observes, 

 " here is a rare bird, who looks into a thing perfectly, 

 and is deceived by no false show of right." Having it 

 in his mind to illustrate his lately written commentary 

 upon Ptolemy with a dozen horoscopes of eminent men, 

 he proposed to do homage to Ranconet, by placing him 

 and lauding him among the number. Ranconet begged 

 urgently that his horoscope might not be printed, but 

 1 Geniturarum Exemplar, p. 42, for the following facts. 



