308 JEROME CARDAN. 



scarcely tell, but that he had been often secretly prompted 

 he was unable to doubt. Thus, when he was walking one 

 day in the streets of Milan, without any reason known to 

 himself for doing so, he crossed the road, and immediately 

 afterwards there fell from a roof, near an upper window 

 of the house under which he should have been passing if 

 he had not changed his course, cement enough to kill 

 eight oxen 1 . Another time, when riding on his mule, he 

 met a coach, and had an instinctive thought that it would 

 be overturned, for which reason he passed on the wrong 

 side of it, and as he was passing it did overturn, in the di- 

 rection contrary to that which he had chosen. 



Invited to a supper at Rome 2 , Cardan remarked, as he 

 was sitting down among the guests, " If I thought that 

 you would not take it ill, I would say something." 



"You mean to say," one of the company inquired, 

 " that one of us will die?" 



" Yes," the old man answered, " and within the year." 



On the 1st of December following died one of the 

 party, a young man named Virgil. 



" Bring me a paper," Cardan said to an old pupil of 

 his, Gianpaolo Eufomia, who was then at home " I have 

 something to write for you." The paper was brought, and 

 the physician wrote under the young man's eyes, " You 



1 De Libris Propriis. Lib. ult. Op. Tom. i. p. 150. 

 a De Vit& Propria, cap. xlii, for the three next incidents. 



