JEROME CARDAN 67 



very threshold of his triumph a great sorrow and 

 misfortune befell him, the full effect of which he did not 

 experience all at once. In the closing days of 1546 he 

 lost his wife. There is very scant record of her life and 

 character in any of her husband's writings, 1 although he 

 wrote at great length concerning her father ; and the 

 few words that are to be found here and there favour 

 the view that she was a good wife and mother. That 

 Jerome could have been an easy husband to live with 

 under any circumstances it is hard to believe. Lucia's 

 life, had it been prolonged, might have been more free 

 of trouble as the wife of a famous and wealthy 

 physician ; but it was her ill fortune to be the com- 

 panion of her husband only in those dreary, terrible 

 days at Sacco and Gallarate, and in the years of 

 uncertainty which followed the final return to Milan. 

 In the last-named period there was at least the Plat 

 lectureship standing between them and starvation ; but 

 children increased the while in the nursery, and manu- 

 scripts in the desk of the physician without patients, 

 and Lucia's short life was all consumed in this weary 

 time of waiting for fame and fortune which, albeit 

 hovering near, seemed destined to mock and delude the 

 seeker to the end. Cardan was before all else a man of 

 books and of the study, and it is not rare to find that 



1 In writing of his own horoscope (Gemherarum Exempla, 

 p. 461) he records that she miscarried thrice, brought forth 

 three living children, and lived with him fifteen years. He dis- 

 misses his marriage as follows : " Duxi uxorem inexpectato, a 

 quo tempore multa adversa concomitata sunt." De Vita Propria, 

 ch. xli. p. 149. But in De Rerum Subtilitate, p. 375, he records 

 his grief at her death : " Itaque cum a luctu dolor et vigilia 

 invadere soleant, ut mihi anno vertente in morte uxoris Luciae 

 Bandarenas quanquam institutis philosophise munitus essem, re- 

 pugnante tamen natura, memorque vinculi cojugalis, suspiriis ac 

 lachrymis et inedia quinque dierum, a periculo me vindicavi." 



