42 JEROME CARDAN 



on all sides, yet I never grudged money for the buying 

 of books. My residence at Gallarate brought me no 

 profit, for in the whole nineteen months I lived there, I 

 did not receive more than twenty-five crowns towards 

 the rent of the house I hired. I had such ill luck with 

 the dice that I was forced to pawn all my wife's jewels, 

 and our very bed. If it is a wonder that I found 

 myself thus bereft of all my substance, it is still more 

 wonderful that I did not take to begging on account of 

 my poverty, and a wonder greater still that I harboured in 

 my mind no unworthy thoughts against my forefathers, 

 or against right living, or against those honours which I 

 had won honours which afterwards stood me in good 

 stead but bore my misfortunes with mind undisturbed." l 

 Cardan's worldly fortunes were now at their lowest 

 ebb. Burdened with a wife and child, he had found it 

 necessary to return, after a second futile attempt to gain 

 a living by his calling in a country town, to Milan, his 

 " stony-hearted step-mother." If he had reckoned on 

 his mother's bounty he was doomed to disappointment, 

 for Chiara was an irritable woman, and as her son's 

 temper was none of the sweetest, it is almost certain 

 that they must have quarrelled occasionally. It is hard 

 to believe that they could have been on good terms at 

 this juncture, otherwise she would scarcely have allowed 

 him to take his wife and child to what was then the 

 public workhouse of the city ; 2 but this place was his 

 only refuge, and in October 1534 he was glad to shelter 

 himself beneath its roof. 



1 De Vita Propria, ch. xxv. p. 67. 



2 The Xenodochium, which was originally a stranger's lodging- 

 house. By this time places of this sort had become little else than 

 succursales of some religious house. The Governors of the Milanese 

 Xenodochium were the patrons of the Plat endowment which 

 Cardan afterwards enjoyed. 



