JEROME CARDAN 243 



or not he had better go home and break his fast, he 

 found three raisins in his pocket, and thus made a 

 fortunate ending of all his difficulties. 



All this reads like a commonplace chapter of ac- 

 cidents ; but the events recorded did not present 

 themselves to Cardan in this guise. He sits down to 

 moralize over the succession of momentary events : his 

 meeting with Vincenzio ; Vincenzio's meeting with the 

 driver, and directions given to the man to drive to the 

 money-changers' ; the presence of the Governor, his exit 

 from the bank, his consequent meeting with the carriage, 

 and his discovery of the raisins, seven occurrences in all, 

 any one of which, if it had happened a little sooner or 

 a little later, would have brought about great incon- 

 venience, or even worse. He does not deny that other 

 men may not now and then encounter like experiences, 

 but the experiences of other men were not fraught with 

 such momentous crises, nor did they foreshadow so 

 many or grave dangers. 



The chronicling of this episode and the fanciful 

 coincidence of the deaths of Dominicus and Troilus 

 may be taken as evidence that his idiosyncrasies were 

 becoming aggravated by the decay of his faculties. 

 Writing on October I, 1576, he makes mention of the 

 various testaments he had already made, and goes on 

 to say that he had resolved to make a new and final 

 disposition of his goods. He would fain have let his 

 property descend to his immediate offspring, but with a 

 son like Aldo this was impossible, so he left all to 

 Gian Battista's son, who would now be a youth about 

 eighteen years of age, Aldo getting nothing. He 

 desired, for reasons best known to himself, that all his 

 descendants should remain in curatela as long as 

 possible, and that all his property should be held on 



