232 JEROME CARDAN. 



gling for his child, earnestly pleading again and attesting 

 that he was but as a boy of ten. But he could some- 

 times think well and reason as a man ? He owned that 

 he could ; but would they inflict death on a lunatic who 

 killed a man because his lunacy had lucid intervals. The 

 law inclines to mercy, and would say that he sinned when 

 not in his right mind. As for his boy, he was so simple: 

 "I take more thought," the old man urged, "in the 

 buying of my shoes than he took in the marrying of his 

 wife." Was it not folly to wish to get rid of her? Could 

 he by so doing better his condition ? If he meant mur- 

 der, was he not foolish in using insufficient poison ; in 

 having a confidant, and that confidant a boy ; in waiting 

 to be taken when he was detected ; in confessing when 

 he might have escaped by silence, and in confessing more 

 than was suspected, or than any man desired to know ? 

 He told as proof of his son's simplicity how he had sent 

 to him to be bail in ten thousand gold crowns, that he 

 might have two or three hours' liberty to see a show. 



Then he dwelt upon the claim to consideration esta- 

 blished by the social rank of the accused a graduate, a 

 man honoured by the college, noble by ancestry, " for no 

 artificer or person of ignoble rank," he said, "is to be 

 found among our forefathers." He was a student, and 

 was the head matured and educated by so many nights of 

 toil to be cut off like the head of a man ignorant of yester- 

 day as of to-morrow ? 



