214 JEROME CARDAN 



highest hopes. I was accustomed to all the good things 

 nay, to all the luxuries of life. Now I am wretched, 

 despised, with foes swarming around me; I not only 

 count myself miserable, I feel I am far more miserable 

 now than I was happy aforetime. Yet I neither lose 

 my wits nor make any boast, as my actions prove. I 

 do my work as a teacher with my mind closely set on 

 the matter in question, and for this reason I attract a 

 large number of hearers. I manage my affairs better 

 than heretofore ; and, if any man shall compare the 

 book which I have lately published with those which I 

 wrote some time ago, he will not fail to perceive how 

 vastly my intellect has gained in richness, in vivacity, 

 and in purity." 



Though the note of sorrow or even of despair is per- 

 ceptible in these sentences, there is no sign that the virile 

 and elastic spirit of the writer is broken. But there are 

 manifest signs of an increasing tendency towards mental 

 detachment from the world which had used him so ill. 

 With the happiest of men the almost certain prospect 

 of extinction at the end of a dozen years usually tends 

 to foster the growth of a conviction that the world after 

 all is a poor affair, and that to quit it is no great evil. 

 How strongly therefore must reflections of a kindred 

 nature have worked upon a man so cruelly tried as 

 Cardan ! 



