JEROME CARDAN 21 



and divers other things which I now forget In all this 

 I took no small delight, and with straining eyes I would 

 gaze upon these marvels ; wherefore my Aunt Margaret 

 asked me more than once whether I saw anything. I, 

 though I was then only a child, deliberated over this 

 question of hers before I replied, saying to myself: ' If I 

 tell her the facts she will be wroth at the thing whatever 

 it may be which is the cause of these phantasms, and will 

 deprive me of this delight.' And then I seemed to see 

 flowers of all kinds, and four-footed beasts, and birds ; 

 but all these, though they were fashioned most beauti- 

 fully, were lacking in colour, for they were things of air. 

 Therefore I, who neither as a boy nor as an old man 

 ever learned to lie, stood silent for some time. Then 

 my aunt said 'Boy, what makes you stare thus and 

 stand silent ? ' I know not what answer I made, but I 

 think I said nothing at all. In my dreams I fre- 

 quently saw what seemed to be a cock, which I feared 

 might speak to me in a human voice. This in sooth 

 came to pass later on, and the words it spake were 

 threatening ones, but I cannot now recall what I may 

 have heard on these occasions." 1 



With a brain capable of such remarkable exercises as 

 the above-written vision, living his life in an atmosphere 

 of books, and with all games and relaxations dear to 

 boys of his age denied to him, it was no marvel that 

 Jerome should make an early literary essay on his own 

 account. The death of a young kinsman, Niccolo 

 Cardano, 2 suggested to him a theme which he elaborated 

 in a tract called De immortalitate paranda, a work which 

 perished unlamented by its author, and a little later he 

 wrote a treatise on the calculation of the distances between 



1 De Vita Propria, ch. xxxvii. p. 114; De Rerum Sitbtilitate 

 (Basil, 1554), p. 524. 2 Opera, torn. i. p. 61. 



