CHAPTER IX 



THE year 1555 may be held to mark the point of 

 time at which Cardan reached the highest point of his 

 fortunes. After a long and bitter struggle with an 

 adverse world he had come out a conqueror, and his 

 rise to fame and opulence, if somewhat slow, had been 

 steady and secure. He longed for wealth, not that he 

 might figure as a rich man, but so that he might win the 

 golden independence which permits a student to prose- 

 cute the task which seems to subserve the highest pur- 

 poses of true learning, and frees him from the irksome 

 battle for daily bread. He loved, indeed, to spend money 

 over beautiful things, and there are few more attractive 

 touches in the picture he draws of himself than the 

 confession of his passion for costly penholders, gems, 

 rare books, vessels of brass and silver, and painted 

 spheres. 1 In this brief season of ease and security, 

 there were no flaming portents in the sky to foretell 

 the cruel stroke of evil fortune which was destined 

 so soon to fall upon him. 



Cardan has left a very pathetic sketch of his own 

 miserable boyhood in the strangely ordered home in 

 Milan, with his callous, tyrannical father, his quick- 

 tempered mother, and the superadded torment of his 

 Aunt Margaret's presence. Fazio Cardano was a man 



1 De Vita Propria, p. 57. 

 162 



