202 JEROME CARDAN. 



Church as a saint. It was well for the fortunes of the 

 sinner Cardan that he had a firm friend in Saint Carlo 

 Borromeo. Of that great man I trust that I shall say 

 enough if I sum up his character in the words of a French- 

 man who wrote in the succeeding century: " It may be 

 said of Saint Carlo Borromeo that he was an abridgment 

 of all the bishops given by the Lord to his Church in the 

 preceding ages; and that in him were collected all the 

 episcopal virtues that had been distributed among them 1 ." 

 Gianbatista Cardan had grown up from a miserable 

 childhood. " He felt," his father said 3 , " all my adversi- 

 ties, and little of my success." He was born, as it may 

 be remembered, at Gallarate when his parents were ex- 

 tremely poor, and he was at first entrusted to a good nurse. 

 But that nurse had a jealous husband, who compelled her 

 to desert her charge. Then, because Jerome and Lucia, 



1 Antoine Godeau "Eloges des Eveques qui dans tous les siecles de 

 PEglise ont fleury en doctrine et en saintete." Paris, 1665. Eloge 98. 

 Quoted through Count Verri's Storia di Milano. I should here ac- 

 knowledge myself to be indebted now and then to Verri's History for 

 information upon the affairs of Milan. 



2 The succeeding narrative is drawn chiefly from two sources: 



1. The last chapter of the work on the Uses of Adversity, entitled 

 De Luctu, written just after the events, and a fair statement of facts. 



2. Cardan's defence of his son before the senate, written in the midst 

 of the trouble, and of course a one-sided version of the case. The 

 defence was appended to the first edition of " The Uses of Adversity," 

 paged continuously. The narrative here given is based throughout 

 on the chapter De Luctu, and authority will, therefore, be cited only 

 for interpolated incidents. 



