AT LOU VAIN ANTWERP BASLE. 151 



and when Jerome talked with him at Leyden, forty-five 

 years old, and only two years distant from his death. 



From Louvain the travellers went by Mechlin to 

 Antwerp, and at Antwerp they remained a little time, 

 for no pains were spared there to detain them 1 . In that 

 town Jerome met with a slight accident. Going into a 

 shop to buy a gem, he fell over the brasier, was hurt and 

 bruised in his left ear, but the injury was not more than 

 skin-deep. 



Antwerp was the first place at which any long halt was 

 made, and to visit that town Cardan had diverged slightly 

 from his track. The original route was afterwards re- 

 sumed, through Liege and Aix-la-Chapelle, to Cologne. 

 From Cologne the travellers went up the Rhine, by 

 Coblentz, Mayence, Worms, Spires, and Strasburg, to 

 Basle. 



At Basle, if Cardan had not received timely warning 

 from Guglielmo Gratalaro, he would unwittingly have 

 put up at a house infected by the plague. That town 

 was the second place at which he tarried for a little time, 

 and there the learned Carolus Aflfaidatus (who had pub- 

 lished a work on physics and astronomy at Venice in the 

 year 1547) received him into his villa. That liberal 



1 De Vita Propria, cap. xxix. for much that follows on Cardan's 

 route, for the next incident cap. xxx. of the same work. Whatever 

 is said in the text more than may be covered by these references, will 

 be found in the Geniturarum Exemplar, pp. 138, 139. 



