JEROME CARDAN 187 



and in the course of their merry-making he fell in love 

 with a girl. While I was living at Milan he was taken 

 with fever, and came to me ; but, for various reasons, I 

 did not give proper attention to him, first, because he 

 himself made light of his ailment ; second, because I 

 knew not that his sickness had been brought on by ex- 

 cessive toil and exposure to the sun ; and third, because, 

 when he had been seized with a similar distemper on 

 two or three occasions before this, he had always got 

 well within four or five days. Besides this I was then 

 in trouble owing to the running away of my son Aldo 

 and one of my servants. What more is there to tell ? 

 Four days after I had ordered him to be bled, mes- 

 sengers came to me in the night and begged me to go 

 and see him, for he was apparently near his end. He 

 was seized with convulsions and lost his senses, but I 

 battled with the disease and brought him round. I was 

 obliged to return to Pavia to resume my teaching, and 

 William, when he was well enough to get up, was forced 

 to sleep in the workshop by his master, who had been 

 bidden to a wedding. There he suffered so much from 

 cold and bad food that, when he was setting out for 

 Pavia to seek me, he was again taken ill. His unfeeling 

 master caused him to be removed to the poor-house, and 

 there he died the following morning from the violence 

 of the distemper, from agony of mind, and from the cold 

 he had suffered. Indeed I was so heavily stricken by 

 mischance that meseemed I had lost another son/' 



It was partly as a consolation in his own grief, and 

 partly as a monument to the ill-fated youth, that Cardan 

 wrote the Dialogus de Morte, a work which contains 

 little of interest beyond the record of Cardan's impres- 

 sions of Englishmen already quoted. But it was beyond 

 hope that he should find adequate solace for the gnawing 



