AIMAR DE RANCONET. 107 



Jerome says that he refused him liis request, because he 

 thought it unjust that the opportunity should be passed 

 over of celebrating the name of a man whose equal he 

 had not known in Italy, and for whose friendship alone it 

 had been worth while to visit France. The horoscope 

 was published therefore. It prophesied to him difficulty 

 in all affairs ; assigned to him a wife and children of illus- 

 trious character, some of whom would die by violence. 

 The melancholy fate of Ranconet fast followed the publi- 

 cation of these prophecies, and Cardan seems afterwards to 

 have wished that he had complied with his friend's en- 

 treaty, for he writes sadly when reviewing his past life : 

 " I injured those whom I proposed to praise, among them 

 the president at Paris 5 the most learned Aimar Ranconet 1 . 

 Leaving good friends behind, the travellers proceeded 

 on their journey. Cardan carried away with him no plea- 

 sant thoughts of Paris as a town. Its general construction 

 had reminded him of Milan, but the streets he had found 

 always full of dirt, emitting stench, and the air unwhole- 

 some, the population being at the same time dense. Per- 

 haps, he suggests, it is because of the dirt (lutum) that 

 the town has been called Lutetia, though,he admits, there 

 may be other derivations 2 . 



' l De Vita Propria, p. 61. 



2 De Varietate Renim (ed. Bas. 1557), p. 667. In the same chapter 

 of that work" On Cities" he characterises Rouen and Rome. 



