PRIVATE AFFAIRS. 285 



to have been deprived of it for a time by the imper- 

 fect rescinding of the sentence of banishment pronounced 

 against him in his native town. In the succeeding month 

 of August, Jerome received from his printer a parcel of 

 the missing books, which had at last rapidly passed through 

 the press. These changes reopened two important sources 

 of his income. In the same month the professor by whom 

 he was most obstructed quitted Bologna, giving up a salary 

 of seven hundred gold crowns. There remained then only, 

 says Jerome, the general conspiracy of the physicians. 



Of Aldo 1 , it will be enough to say that his foolish and 

 abandoned conduct was the cause to his father of inces- 

 sant trouble. Fathers, by the law of Bologna, had then 

 many judicial rights over their sons, and Jerome more 

 than once imprisoned Aldo, in the vain hope of checking 

 his misconduct. He was the son to whom the stars had 

 been so liberal in promises of all good things, genius, 

 fame, wealth, the confidence of princes; he was exiled at 

 last, and disinherited. There remained by Cardan only 

 the grandchild Fazio. 



His right as a father Jerome had exercised fes a citizen 

 of Bologna, since the senate (from whom he received 

 always much honour) had conferred on him the freedom 

 of the city 3 . He does not omit to tell us what he thought 

 about his fellow-townsmen. "When I was at Bologna," 

 1 De Vita Propria, cap. xxvii. 2 Ibid. p. 32. 



