JEROME CARDAN 27 



and important, albeit the Rector could, if he willed, 

 appoint a deputy, and the calls upon the purse of the 

 holder must have been very heavy. It would be hard to 

 imagine any one less fitted to fill such a post than Cardan, 

 and assuredly no office could befit him less than this 

 pseudo-rectorship. 1 It must ever remain a mystery why 

 he was preferred, why he was elected, and why he con- 

 sented to serve : though, as to the last-named matter, 

 he hints in a passage lately cited from De Utilitate^ that 

 it was through the persuasions of his mother that he 

 took upon himself this disastrous honour. Many pas- 

 ages in his writings suggest that Chiara was an indulgent 

 parent. She let Fazio have no peace till he consented 

 to allow the boy to go to college ; she paid secretly for 

 music-lessons, so that Jerome was enabled to enjoy the 

 relaxation he loved better than anything else in the 

 world except gambling ; she paid all his charges 

 during his student life at Padua ; and now, quite 

 naturally, she would have shed her heart's blood rather 

 than let this son of hers ugly duckling as he was 

 miss what she deemed to be the crowning honour of the 

 rectorship ; but after all the sacrifices Chiara made, 

 after all the misfortunes which attended Jerome's ill- 

 directed ambition, there is a doubt as to whether he 

 ever was Rector in the full sense of the term. Many 

 times and in divers works he affirms that once upon a 

 time he was Rector, and over and beyond this he sets 

 down in black and white the fact, more than once, that 

 he never told a lie; so it is only polite to accept this 



1 Tomasinus writes that the Rector should be " Virum illustrem, 

 providum, eloquentem ac divitem, quique eo pollet rerum usu ut 

 Gymnasi decora ipsius gubernatione et splendore augeantur." 

 Gymnasium Patavinum, p. 54. He likewise gives a portrait of the 

 Rector in his robes of office, and devotes several chapters to an 

 account of his duties. 



