JEROME CARDAN 231 



Josephus, and myself. All of these have enjoyed pros- 

 perous lives except Socrates and me, and I, as I have 

 said before, was at one time offered many and favourable 

 opportunities for the achievement of happiness. But C. 

 Caesar the dictator, Cicero, Antony, Brutus, and Cassius 

 were also attended by mighty spirits, albeit malignant. 

 For a long time I have been persuaded that I too had 

 one, but by what method it gave me intelligence as to 

 events about to happen, I could not exactly ascertain 

 until I reached the seventy-fourth year of my age, the 

 season when I began to write this record of my life. I 

 now perceive that when I was in Milan in 1557, when 

 my genius perceived what was hanging over me how 

 that my son on that same evening had promised to 

 marry Brandonia Seroni, and that he would complete 

 the nuptials the following day it produced in me that 

 palpitation of the heart of which I have already made 

 mention, a weakness known to my genius alone, a 

 manifestation which served to simulate a trembling 

 of the bed." 



Cardan writes at length to show that the mysterious 

 knocking which he and Rodolfo Sylvestro had heard 

 during his imprisonment at Bologna, the peasant who 

 entered his bed-chamber saying " Te fin casa" and 

 divers other manifestations, going back as far as 1531 

 croaking of ravens, barking of dogs, and the ignition 

 of fire-wood must all have been brought about by the 

 working of this powerful spirit. In 1570 there happened 

 to him one of his everyday experiences of the presence 

 of supernatural powers. In the middle of the night he 

 was conscious of some presence walking about the room. 

 It sat down beside him, and at the same time a loud 

 noise arose from a chest which stood near. This phe- 

 nomenon, he admits, might well have been the figment 



