68 JEROME CARDAN 



one of this sort makes a harsh unsympathetic husband. 

 The qualities which he attributes to himself in his 

 autobiography suggest that to live with a man cursed 

 with such a nature would have been difficult even in 

 prosperity, and intolerable in trouble and privation. 

 But fretful and irascible as Cardan shows himself to have 

 been, there was a warm-hearted, affectionate side to his 

 nature. He was capable of steadfast devotion to all 

 those to whom his love had ever been given. His 

 reverence for the memory of his tyrannical and irascible 

 father had been noted already, and a still more remark- 

 able instance of his fidelity and love will have to be 

 considered when the time comes to deal with the crown- 

 ing tragedy of his life. If Cardan had this tender side 

 to his nature, if he could speak tolerant and even lauda- 

 tory words concerning such a father as Fazio Cardano, 

 and show evidences of a love strong as death in the 

 fight he made for the life of his ill-starred and unworthy 

 son, it may be hoped in spite of his almost unnatural 

 silence concerning her that he gave Lucia some of that 

 tenderness and sympathy which her life of hard toil and 

 heavy sacrifice so richly deserved ; and that even in the 

 days when he sold her trinkets to pay his gambling 

 losses, she was not destined to weep the bitter tears of 

 a neglected wife. If her early married life had been full 

 of care and travail, if she died when a better day 

 seemed to be dawning, she was at least spared the 

 supreme sorrow and disgrace which was destined to fall 

 so soon upon the household. Judging by what subse- 

 quently happened, it will perhaps be held that fate, in 

 cutting her thread of life, was kinder to her than to 

 her husband, when it gave him a longer term of years 

 under the sun. 



