3 o JEROME CARDAN 



reason of the wounds I had given him. Now of his own 

 accord he brought out a suit of clothes, fitted for seafar- 

 ing, and, having clad myself in them, I journeyed with 

 him as far as Padua." 1 

 /^Cardan's life from rise to set cannot be estimated 



^/otherwise than an unhappy one, and its least fortunate 

 years were probably those lying between his twenty-first 

 ^and his thirty-first year of age. During this period he 

 was guilty of that crowning folly, the acceptance of the 

 Rectorship of the Gymnasium at Padua, he felt the 

 sharpest stings of poverty, and his life was overshadowed 

 by dire physical misfortune. He gives a rapid sketch of 

 the year following his father's death. " Then, my father 



; having breathed his last and my term of office come to 

 an end, I went, at the beginning of my twenty-sixth 

 year, to reside at Sacco, a town distant ten miles from 

 Padua and twenty-five from Venice. I fixed on this 

 place by the advice of Francesco Buonafidei, a physician 

 of Padua, who, albeit I brought no profit to him not 

 even being one of those who attended his public teaching 

 helped me and took a liking for me, being moved to this 

 benevolence by his exceeding goodness of heart. In this 

 place I lived while our State was being vexed by every 

 sort of calamity. In 1524 by a raging pestilence and by 

 a two-fold change of ruler. In 1526 and 1527 by a 

 destructive scarcity of the fruits of the earth. It was 

 hard to get corn in exchange for money of any kind, and 

 over and beyond this was the intolerable weight of 

 taxation. In 1528 the land was visited by divers 

 diseases and by the plague as well, but these afflictions 

 seemed the easier to bear because all other parts were 

 likewise suffering from the same. In 1529! ventured to 

 return to Milan these ill-starred troubles being in some 

 1 De Vita Propria^ ch. xxx. p. 79. 



