JEROME CARDAN 241 



set forth by my method of art, I gave my judgment 

 thereupon." l 



In his latter years Cardan must have been in easy 

 circumstances. The pension from the Pope no mention 

 is made of its amount and the fees he received from 

 his patients allowed him to keep a carriage ; and writing 

 in his seventy-fifth year, he says that no fees would 

 tempt him to join any consultation unless he should be 

 well assured what sort of men he was expected to meet. 2 



In the Norma Vitcs Consarcinata* he relates how in 

 April 1576 there were two inmates of the Xenodochium 

 at Rome, Troilus and Dominicus. It seemed that 

 Troilus exercised some strange and malefic influence 

 over his companion, who was taken with fever. He got 

 well of this, but only to fall into a dropsy, which de- 

 spatched him in a week. Shortly before his death, at 

 the seventh hour, he cried out to two Spaniards who 

 were standing by the bed that he had suffered such 

 great torture from the working of Troilus, and that he 

 was dying therefrom. " Therefore," he cried, " in your 

 presence I summon him with my dying words to appear 

 before God's tribunal, that he may give an account of 

 all the evil he has wrought against me." On the follow- 

 ing day there came a messenger from Corneto, a few 

 miles from Rome, saying that Troilus, who was sojourn- 

 ing there, had fallen sick. The physician inquired at 

 what hour, and the messenger said it was at seven 

 o'clock, a day or two ago. He lay ill some days, an 

 unfavourable case, but not a desperate one, and one 

 night shortly afterwards at seven o'clock, the top of the 

 mosquito curtains fell, and he died at exactly the same 

 hour as Dominicus. 



1 De Vita Propria, chapter -x\.\\., passim. 



2 Ibid., p. 66. 3 Opera, torn. i. p. 339. 



