264 JEROME CARDAN 



Battista's fate can doubt the sincerity of Cardan's 

 remorse for that neglect of the boy's youthful training 

 which helped to bring him to ruin, and the care which 

 he bestowed upon his grandson Fazio proved that his 

 regret was not of that sort which exhales itself in empty 

 words. The zeal with which he threw himself into the 

 struggle for his son's life, and his readiness to strip 

 himself of his last coin as the fight went on, show that 

 he was capable of warm-hearted affection, and afraid of 

 no sacrifice in the cause of duty. 



The brutal candour Which Cardan used in probing 

 the weaknesses of his owri nature and in displaying 

 them to the world, he used likewise in his dealings with 

 others. If he detected Branda Porro or Camutio in a 

 blunder he would inform them they were blockheads 

 without hesitation, and plume himself afterwards on the 

 score of his blunt honesty. Veracity was not a common 

 virtue in those days, but Cardan laid claim to it with a 

 display of insistence which was not, perhaps, in the best 

 taste. Over and over again he writes that he never told 

 a lie ; J a contention which seems to have roused espe- 

 cially the bile of Naud6, and to have spurred him on 

 to make his somewhat clumsy assault on Cardan's 

 veracity. 2 His citation of the case of the stranger who 

 came with the volume of Apuleius for sale, and of the 

 miraculous gift of classic tongues, has already been 

 referred to ; but these may surely be attributed to an 

 exaggerated activity of that particular side of Cardan's 



1 He writes in this strain in De Vita Propria, ch. xiv. p. 49, in De 

 Varietate Rerum, p. 626, and in Geniturarum Exempla, p. 43 1 . 



2 On the subject of dissimulation Cardan writes : " Assuevi 

 vultum in contrarium semper eflformare ; ideo simulare possum, 

 dissimulare nescio." De Vita Propria, ch. xiii. p. 42. Again in 

 Libellus Praceptorum ad filios (Opera, torn. i. p. 481), " Nolite 

 unquam mentiri, sed circumvenire [circumvenite ?].'' 



