296 JEROME CARDAN. 



that he was liable to heavy penalties. To all this opera- 

 tion of the age against him, to the stringency of the new 

 ecclesiastical spirit that had succeeded to the laxer times 

 of Jerome's youth and manhood, the old man could 

 oppose in self-defence nothing but silence and sub- 

 mission. 



Thus he wrote of the accusation against him by which 

 he was cast into prison at Bologna : not that he was inno- 

 cent, but that he ought to know how to endure the 

 punishment of his crime if he was guilty, or the wrong if 

 he was innocent, before God. He ventured no further than 

 io leave the question of his guilt or innocence entirely 

 open. But even such distant allusions are extremely rare. 

 He took the wisest course, and as he could not write what 

 was untrue, and would not write what might be used for 

 his destruction, he wrote nothing at all upon so hazardous 

 a subject. "We find, therefore, no reference in his books 

 to the impiety with which it is notorious that he was 

 charged, and it is for that reason, I believe, that we find 

 no precise account of the causes of his banishment from 

 Milan and of his subsequent confinement at Bologna. 

 This accords, indeed, with his expressed doctrine, for in a 

 Book of Advice written two or three years before his death 

 at Rome, in the course of a chapter on Calumny from 

 -which, by the way, we may infer that he was annoyed at 



