io JEROME CARDAN 



question, and undoubtedly it would be undesirable to 

 trust this record without seeking confirmation elsewhere- 

 This confirmation is nearly always at hand, for there is 

 hardly a noteworthy event in his career which he does 

 not refer to constantly in the more autobiographic of his 

 works. The De Vita Propria is indeed ill arranged and 

 full of inconsistencies, but in spite of its imperfections, it 

 presents its subject as clearly and effectively as Benvenuto 

 Cellini is displayed in his own work. The rough sketch 

 of a great master often performs its task more thoroughly 

 than the finished painting, and Cardan's autobiography 

 is a fragment of this sort. It lets pass in order of pro- 

 cession the moody neglected boy in Fazio's ill-ordered 

 house, the student at Pavia, the youthful Rector of the 

 Paduan Gymnasium, plunging when just across the 

 threshold of life into criminal excess of Sardanapalean 

 luxury, the country doctor at Sacco and afterwards at 

 Gallarate, starving amongst his penniless patients, the 

 University professor, the famous physician for whose 

 services the most illustrious monarchs in Europe came 

 as suppliants in vain, the father broken by family 

 disgrace and calamity, and the old man, disgraced and 

 suspected and harassed by persecutors who shot their 

 arrows in the dark, but at the same time tremblingly 

 anxious to set down the record of his days before the 

 night should descend. 



Until he had completed his nineteenth year Jerome 

 continued to dwell under the roof which for the time 

 being might give shelter to his parents. The emolu- 

 ments which Fazio drew from his profession were suffi- 

 cient for the family wants he himself being a man of 

 simple tastes ; wherefore Jerome was not forced, in 

 addition to his other youthful troubles, to submit to 

 that execrata paupertas and its concomitant miseries 



