JEROME CARDAN 183 



Milan, doubtless because he had allowed the law to take 

 its course. Indeed every person great or small who had 

 been concerned in Gian Battista's condemnation, was, 

 by Cardan's showing, overtaken by grave misfortune. 



Cardan still held his Professorship at Pavia, and in 

 spite of the difficulties and embarrassments of his posi- 

 tion he went back to resume his work of teaching a few 

 days after the fatal issue of his son's trial and condem- 

 nation. By the pathetic simplicity of its diction the 

 following extract gives a vivid and piteous picture of 

 the utter desolation and misery into which he was cast : 

 it shows likewise that, after a lapse of fifteen years, the 

 memory of his shame and sorrow was yet green, and 

 that a powerful stimulus had been given to his super- 

 stitious fancies by the events lately chronicled. " In 

 the month of May, in the year MDLX, a time when 

 sleep had refused to come to me because of my grief for 

 my son's death : when I could get no relief from fasting 

 nor from the flagellation I inflicted upon my legs when 

 I rode abroad, nor from the game of chess which I then 

 played with Ercole Visconti, a youth very dear to me, 

 and like myself troubled with sleeplessness, I prayed 

 God to have pity upon me, because I felt that I must 

 needs die, or lose my wits, or at least give up my work 

 as Professor, unless I got some sleep, and that soon. 

 Were I to resign my office, I could find no other means 

 of earning my bread : if I should go mad I must become 

 a laughing-stock to all. I must in any case lavish what 



ruisset, et ipse multis modis conflictatus est gravibus morbis, caede 

 propriae neptis a conjuge suo, litibus gravibus: turn etiam subsecuta 

 calamitas publica, Zotophagite insula amissa, classe regia dissipata." 

 De Vita Propria, ch. xli. p. 153. The island alluded to must 

 have been Lotophagites insula, an island near the Syrtes Minor 

 on the African coast, and the loss of the same probably refers to 

 some disaster during the Imperialist wars against the Moors. 



