242 JEROME CARDAN. 



CHAPTER X. 



THE LAST YEARS OF CARDAN AT PA VIA. 



AFFLICTED and ashamed, Cardan returned to Pavia, 

 where his sensitive mind suffered a daily torture. Infamy 

 had fallen upon his house. He either was endured un- 

 easily by his associates at Pavia, or he tortured himself 

 with the belief that he was no longer honoured. "I 

 could not," he says, " be retained with credit, or dis- 

 missed without a reason; I could not live safely in my 

 own country, or quit it without risk. I wandered in 

 despair about the town, conversed with people who 

 despised me, shunned ungratefully my friends; I could 

 not devise what to do, I knew not whither to go; I do 

 not know whether I was most wretched or most hated 1 ." 

 Nevertheless he remained at Pavia two more years. 



He had bought a house there, near the Church of Santa 

 Maria di Canepanova 2 ; he had, of course, by right of his 

 position, been enrolled a member of the Pavian College 

 of Physicians; and before the late catastrophe he had 



1 Paralipomenon, Lib. iv. cap. vi. 



2 De Vita Propria, cap. xxiy. 



