276 JEROME CARDAN. 



professorship in the university of that town, he quitted 

 finally his native soil. In spite of its nominal reversal of 

 the decree of exile, the Milanese senate still proscribed 

 him as a teacher, and he appears to have been virtually 

 banished from the state. While he was preparing for the 

 removal to his new home, in the course of packing he 

 discovered a manuscript, that of the book on Fate, which 

 he had lost for three years, and after much vain search 

 supposed to have been stolen. It was under a little iron 

 box inside his desk 1 . Reflection upon this portent caused 

 him to infer that he should, in the course of three years, 

 be restored to his country, for that would be like the 

 finding of the manuscript, an event of which there had 

 seemed to be no hope, the happening of which would be 

 of no use to him, but nevertheless welcome. 



There is an allusion to a dream that Cardan had at or 

 soon after the time of his leaving Pa via, which tends to 

 confirm the opinion already expressed as to one of the 

 grave accusations under which he had then fallen. One 

 part of it, he says in his interpretation 3 , signified religion, 

 in the name of which he should suffer trials and be 

 brought into no slight anxiety; but he should not sustain 

 much hurt. 



Having removed to Bologna with his son Aldo and 



1 Paralipomenon, Lib. iii. cap, 6. 



2 Synesiorum Somniorum (ed. cit.), p. 219. 



