284 JEROME CARDAN. 



year after he quitted Pavia, Jerome found one night 1 that 

 the collar of his shirt had become entangled with the 

 string by which he suspended from his neck the emerald 

 before mentioned, and a written charm. He puzzled him- 

 self for a time over the entanglement, and then allowed 

 it to remain. Soon afterwards putting his hand to his 

 neck, he found that the knot had become loose, and that the 

 string was free. This portended, of course, some speedy 

 unravelment of the knot in his own affairs. Since he had 

 come to Bologna his little property in Milan had been 

 held by his son-in-law, and he himself had received none 

 of the returns. He had books which had been for a 

 long time lying untouched at the printer's. He was 

 lecturing without a lecture hour. His son Aldo was 

 in prison- he is never to be heard of incidentally, except 

 as party to some scrape and there were two professors 

 who obstructed all his doings at Bologna. All this knot 

 of trouble, then, was to unravel itself. And so it did. At 

 the end of the next July, nine months afterwards, Car- 

 dinal Alciat, who had assisted in procuring Jerome's 

 appointment at Bologna 3 , and who remained until the 

 death of the old man an untiring friend Cardinal Alciat 

 caused the restoration to him. of his property. He seems 



1 Paralipomenon, Lib. iii. cap. 11. 



2 Synesiorum Somuiorum, p. 252; but the previous reference covers 

 the other facts. 



