236 JEROME CARDAN. 



stung during supper to the infliction of a barbarous chas- 

 tisement, not wholly out of keeping with the roughness 

 of the times he cut off one of his son's ears. He referred 

 to that act afterwards as one of the misdeeds of his life. 

 It was remembered against him in the town, and found 

 its way into Evangelista Seroni's act of crimination. 

 "He -calls me cruel," said Cardan, "and cites what 

 should be a proof rather of drunkenness than cruelty. I 

 am cruel if it be cruel to hate wickedness. I hate not 

 only evil-doers, but those who wilfully turn into the way 

 of evil." Truly it was a rough kind of reprimand with 

 which to hope that a son might be turned out of the way 

 of vice, and Aldo was not made less wicked by his father's 

 wrath. 



These were the points upon which Evangelista's do- 

 cument of inculpation compelled Jerome to speak. He 

 ended with a personal appeal to the senate. They could 

 not condemn his son to the galleys without condemning 

 to a worse fate the father, who was innocent ; death to 

 his son would be far worse than death to him. He be- 

 sought, therefore, that his son might be sentenced only 

 to perpetual exile. 



There were members of the senate, as he thought, in- 

 fluenced in their judgment by hostility towards himself 1 . 

 He had meditated over the defence of his son that has 

 1 De Vita Propria, cap. x. 



