THE KEPLY TO SERONI. 235 



so much, that he could earn little money. And he was 

 kept poor too by the prodigal life (to use a modest term) 

 of his father-in-law, of whom it is within the public 

 knowledge that he has wasted his own money and estate, 

 which I am told were ample means enough, and more 

 beside. And the mother-in-law and the sisters-in-law 

 gnawed to the bone that miserable boy of mine, who 

 never knew how to deny. Oh, you will say 1 , that was 

 but a little matter ! Granted. But that little was all to 

 a poor man earning not much, and maintaining a large 

 household." 



A random charge had been inserted in the crimination 

 which accused the father of a guilty knowledge and com- 

 plicity in his son's crime. The ground for the accusation 

 was that a short time before the .murder Jerome Cardan 

 quitted a large practice at Milan, and removed to Pavia, 

 where he accepted smaller gains. This accusation Cardan 

 in a few words showed to be absurd ; but he said, " I 

 take it to be a spark thrown from the hot wrath of 

 Dominus Evangelista, rather than a conjecture stated by 

 his counsel ; it would be too clumsy for that." 



He replied briefly to the accusation against himself of 

 cruelty. I have left it to be stated here, that after his 

 return from England, while struggling against the repro- 

 bate courses of his son Aldo, he had on one occasion been 

 1 "Oh, dicetis, parum erat hoc! fateor. . . ." P. 1149. 



