38 JEROME CARDAN 



with a loud report, and the fragments thereof were 

 scattered around. This event Bandarini regarded as an 

 augury of evil, and indeed evil followed swiftly after. 

 Before a year had passed he was dead, some holding 

 that his death had been hastened by the ill conduct 

 of his eldest son, and others whispering suspicions 

 of poison. 



Jerome and his young wife betook themselves to 

 Milan, but this visit seems to have been fully as 

 unprofitable as the one he had paid in 1529. In that 

 year he had to face his first rejection by the College of 

 Physicians, when he made application for admission ; 

 and there is indirect evidence that he now made a second 

 application with no better result. 1 In any case his 

 affairs were in a very bad way. If he had money in his 

 pocket he would not keep long away from the gaming- 

 table ; and, with the weight of trouble ever bearing him 

 down more and more heavily, it is almost certain that 

 his spirits must have suffered, and that poor Lucia must 

 have passed many an unhappy hour on account of his 

 nervous irritability. Then the gates of his profession 

 remained closed to him by the action of the College. 

 The pretext the authorities gave for their refusal to 

 admit him was his illegitimate birth ; but it is not 

 unlikely that they may have mistrusted as a colleague 

 the son of Fazio Cardano, and that stories of the profli- 

 gate life and the intractable temper of the candidate 

 may have been brought to them. 2 His health suffered 



1 De Utilitate, p. 357 : " Nam in urbe nee collegium recipere 

 volebat nee cum aliquo ex illis artem exercere licebat et sine illis 

 difficillimum erat." He writes thus while describing this particular 

 visit to Milan. 



2 111 fortune seems to have pursued the whole family in their 

 relations with learned societies. "Nam et pater meus ut ab eo 

 accepi, diu in ingressu Collegii Jurisconsultorum laboravit, et 



