166 JEROME CARDAN 



numerous, but he had at least sufficient industry to 

 qualify himself as a physician. He was certainly 

 his father's favourite child, and on this account the 

 eulogies written of him in those dark hours when 

 Cardan's reason was reeling under the accumulated 

 blows of private grief and public disgrace, must be 

 accepted with caution. There is no evidence to show 

 he was in intellect anything like the budding genius 

 his father deemed him; as to conduct and manner of 

 life, his carriage was exactly what the majority of 

 youths, brought up in a similar fashion, would have 

 adopted. There must have been something in the 

 young man's humours which from the first made his 

 father apprehensive as to the future, for Cardan soon came 

 to see that an early marriage would be the surest safe- 

 guard for Gian Battista's future. With his mind bent on 

 this scheme, he pointed out to his son various damsels 

 of suitable station, any one of whom he would be ready 

 to welcome into his family, but Gian Battista always 

 found some excuse for declining matrimony. He de- 

 clared that he was too closely engaged with his work ; 

 and, over and beyond this, it would not be seemly to 

 bring home a bride into a house like their own, full of 

 young men, for Cardan, as usual, had several pupils 

 living with him. It was at the end of 1557 that the 

 first forebodings of misfortune appeared. To Cardan, 

 according to custom, they came in the form of a portent, 

 for he records how he lay awake at midnight on December 

 20, and was suddenly conscious that his bed was shaking. 

 He at once attributed this to a shock of an earthquake, 

 and in the morning he demanded of the servant, Simone 

 Sosia, who occupied the truckle bed in the room, whether 

 he had felt the same. Simone replied that he had, 

 whereupon Cardan, as soon as he arose, went to the 



