34 JEROME CARDAN 



in sooth it seemed that there was no further calamity 

 left for me to endure." l After reading these words, it is 

 hard to believe that a man, afflicted with a misfortune 

 which he characterizes in these terms, could have been 

 even moderately happy ; much less in that state of bliss 

 which he sits down to describe forty years afterwards. 



But the end of his life at Sacco was fated to be 

 happier than the beginning, and it is possible that 

 memories of the last months he spent there may 

 have helped to colour with rosy tint the picture of 

 happiness recently referred to. In the first place he 

 was suddenly freed from his physical infirmity, and 

 shortly after his restoration he met and married the 

 woman who, as long as she lived with him, did all that 

 was possible to make him happy. Every momentous 

 event of Cardan's life and many a trifling one as well 

 was heralded by some manifestation of the powers 

 lying beyond man's cognition. In writing about the 

 signs and tokens which served as premonitions of his 

 courtship and marriage, he glides easily into a descrip- 

 tion of the events themselves in terms which are worth 

 producing. "In times past I had my home in Sacco, and 

 there I led a joyful life, as if I were a man unvexed by 

 misfortune (I recall this circumstance somewhat out of 

 season, but the dream I am about to tell of seems only 

 too appropriate to the occasion), or a mortal made free 

 of the habitations of the blest, or rather of some region 

 of delight. Then, on a certain night, I seemed to find 

 myself in a pleasant garden, beautiful exceedingly, 

 decked with flowers and filled with fruits of divers sorts, 

 and a soft air breathed around. So lovely was it all 

 that no painter nor our poet Pulci, nor any imagination 

 of man could have figured the like. I was standing in 

 1 De Utilitate, p. 235. 



