JEROME CARDAN 13 



" But what chiefly deserved condemnation in my father 

 was that he brought up certain other youths with the 

 intention of leaving to them his goods in case I should 

 die ; which thing, in sooth, meant nothing less than the 

 exposure of myself to open danger through plots of the 

 parents of the boys aforesaid, on account of the prize 

 offered. Over this affair my father and my mother 

 quarrelled grievously, and finally decided to live apart. 

 Whereupon my mother, stricken by this mental vexation, 

 and troubled at intervals with what I deem to have been 

 an hysterical affection, fell one day full on the back of 

 her neck, and struck her head upon the floor, which was 

 composed of tiles. It was two or three hours before she 

 came round, and indeed her recovery was little short of 

 miraculous, especially as at the end of her seizure she 

 foamed much at the mouth. 



" In the meantime I altered the whole drift of this 

 tragedy by a pretended adoption of the religious life, for 

 I became for a time a member of the mendicant Fran- 

 ciscan brotherhood. But at the beginning of my 

 twenty-first year 1 I went to the Gymnasium at Pavia, 

 whereupon my father, feeling my absence, was softened 

 towards me, and a reconciliation between him and my 

 mother took place. 



" Before this time I had learnt music, my mother and 

 even my father having secretly given me money for the 

 same ; my father likewise paid for my instruction in 

 dialectics. I became so proficient in this art that I 

 taught it to certain other youths before I went to the 

 University. Thus he sent me there endowed with the 

 means of winning an honest living ; but he never once 



1 There is a discrepancy between this date and the one given in 

 De Vita Propria, ch. iv. p. 11. "Anno exacto XIX contuli me in 

 Ticinensem Academiam." 



