Jerome Cardan: A Biographical Study

CHAPTER III

During his life at Padua it would appear that Cardan, over and above the allowance made to him by his mother, had no other source of income than the gaming-table.[45] However futile and disastrous his sojourn at this University may have been, he at least took away with him one possession of value, to wit his doctorate of medicine, on the strength of which he began to practise as a country physician at Sacco. The record of his life during these years gives the impression that he must have been one of the most wretched of living mortals. The country was vexed by every sort of misfortune, by prolonged warfare, by raging pestilence, by famine, and by intolerable taxation;[46] but while he paints this picture of misery and desolation in one place, he goes on to declare in another that the time which he spent at Sacco was the happiest he ever knew.[47] No greater instance of inconsistency is to be found in his pages. He writes: "I gambled, I occupied myself with music, I walked abroad, I feasted, giving scant attention the while to my studies. I feared no hurt, I paid my respects to the Venetian gentlemen living in the town, and frequented their houses. I, too, was in the very flower of my age, and no time could have been more delightful than this which lasted for five years and a half."[48]

But for almost the whole of this period Cardan was labouring under a physical misfortune concerning which he writes in another place in terms of almost savage bitterness. During ten years of his life, from his twenty-first to his thirty-first year, he suffered from the loss of virile power, a calamity which he laments in the following words: "And I maintain that this misfortune was to me the worst of evils. Compared with it neither the harsh servitude under my father, nor unkindness, nor the troubles of litigation, nor the wrongs done me by my fellow-townsmen, nor the scorn of my fellow-physicians, nor the ill things falsely spoken against me, nor all the measureless mass of possible evil, could have brought me to such despair, and hatred of life, and distaste of all pleasure, and lasting sorrow. I bitterly wept this misery, that I must needs be a laughing-stock, that marriage must be denied me, and that I must ever live in solitude. You ask for the cause of this misfortune, a matter which I am quite unable to explain. Because of the reasons just mentioned, and because I dreaded that men should know how grave was the ill afflicting me, I shunned the society of women; and, on account of this habit, the same miserable public scandal which I desired so earnestly to avoid, arose concerning me, and brought upon me the suspicion of still more nefarious practices: in sooth it seemed that there was no further calamity left for me to endure."[49] After reading these words, it is hard to believe that a man, afflicted with a misfortune which he characterizes in these terms, could have been even moderately happy; much less in that state of bliss which he sits down to describe forty years afterwards.

But the end of his life at Sacco was fated to be happier than the beginning, and it is possible that memories of the last months he spent there may have helped to colour with rosy tint the picture of happiness recently referred to. In the first place he was suddenly freed from his physical infirmity, and shortly after his restoration he met and married the woman who, as long as she lived with him, did all that was possible to make him happy. Every momentous event of Cardan's life—and many a trifling one as well—was heralded by some manifestation of the powers lying beyond man's cognition. In writing about the signs and tokens which served as premonitions of his courtship and marriage, he glides easily into a description of the events themselves in terms which are worth producing. "In times past I had my home in Sacco, and there I led a joyful life, as if I were a man unvexed by misfortune (I recall this circumstance somewhat out of season, but the dream I am about to tell of seems only too appropriate to the occasion), or a mortal made free of the habitations of the blest, or rather of some region of delight. Then, on a certain night, I seemed to find myself in a pleasant garden, beautiful exceedingly, decked with flowers and filled with fruits of divers sorts, and a soft air breathed around. So lovely was it all that no painter nor our poet Pulci, nor any imagination of man could have figured the like. I was standing in the forecourt of this garden, the door whereof was open, and there was another door on the opposite side, when lo! I beheld before me a damsel clad in white. I embraced and kissed her; but before I could kiss her again, the gardener closed the door. I straightway begged him earnestly that he would open it again, but I begged in vain; wherefore, plunged in grief and clinging to the damsel, I seemed to be shut out of the garden.

"A little time after this there was a rumour in the town of a house on fire, and I was roused from sleep to hurry to the spot. Then I learned that the house belonged to one Altobello Bandarini,[50] a captain of the Venetian levies in the district of Padua. I had no acquaintance with him, in sooth I scarcely knew him by sight. Now it chanced that after the fire he hired a house next door to my own, a step which displeased me somewhat, for such a neighbour was not to my taste; but what was I to do? After the lapse of a few days, when I was in the street, I perceived a young girl who, as to her face and her raiment, was the exact image of her whom I had beheld in my dream. But I said to myself, 'What is this girl to me? If I, poor wretch that I am, take to wife a girl dowered with naught, except a crowd of brothers and sisters, it will be all over with me; forasmuch as I can hardly keep myself as it is. If I should attempt to carry her off, or to have my will of her by stealth, there will of a surety be some tale-bearers about; and her father, being a fellow-townsman and a soldier to boot, would not sit down lightly under such an injury. In this case, or in that, it is hard to say what course I should follow, for if this affair should come to the issue I most desire, I must needs fly the place.' From that same hour these thoughts and others akin to them possessed my brain, which was only too ready to harbour them, and I felt it would be better to die than to live on in such perplexity. Thenceforth I was as one love-possessed, or even burnt up with passion, and I understood what meaning I might gather from the reading of my dream. Moreover I was by this time freed from the chain which had held me back from marriage. Thus I, a willing bridegroom, took a willing bride, her kinsfolk questioning us how this thing had been brought about, and offering us any help which might be of service; which help indeed proved of very substantial benefit.

"But the interpretation of my dreams did not work itself out entirely in the after life of my wife; it made itself felt likewise in the lives of my children. My wife lived with me fifteen years, and alas! this ill-advised marriage was the cause of all the misfortunes which subsequently happened to me. These must have come about either by the working of the divine will, or as the recompense due for some ill deeds wrought by myself or by my forefathers."[51]

The dream aforesaid was not the only portent having reference to his marriage. After describing shakings and tremblings of his bed, for which indeed a natural cause was not far to seek, he tells how in 1531 a certain dog, of gentle temper as a rule, and quiet, kept up a persistent howling for a long time; how some ravens perched on the house-top and began croaking in an unusual manner; and how, when his servant was breaking up a faggot, some sparks of fire flew out of the same; whereupon, "by an unlooked-for step I married a wife, and from that time divers misfortunes have attended me."[52] Lucia, the wife of his choice, was the eldest daughter of Altobello Bandarini, who had, besides her, three daughters and four sons. Jerome, as it has been already noted, was possessed with a fear lest he should be burdened by his brothers- and sisters-in-law after his marriage; but, considering that he was a young unknown physician, without either money or patients, and that Bandarini was a man of position and repute, with some wealth and more shrewdness, the chances were that the burden would lie on the other side. Cardan seems to have inherited Fazio's contempt for wealth, or at least to have made a profession thereof; for, in chronicling the event of his marriage, he sets down, with a certain degree of pomposity, that he took a wife without a dower on account of a certain vow he had sworn.[53] If the bride was penniless the father-in-law was wealthy, and the last-named fact might well have proved a powerful argument to induce Cardan to remain at Sacco, albeit he had little scope for his calling. That he soon determined to quit the place, is an evidence of his independence of spirit, and of his disinclination to sponge upon his well-to-do connections. Bandarini, when this scheme was proposed to him, vetoed it at once. He was unwilling to part with his daughter, and possibly he may have taken a fancy to his son-in-law, for Cardan has left it on record that Bandarini was greatly pleased with the match; he ended, however, by consenting to the migration, which was not made without the intervention of a warning portent. A short time before the young couple departed, it happened that a tile got mixed with the embers in Bandarini's bed-chamber; and, in the course of the night, exploded with a loud report, and the fragments thereof were scattered around. This event Bandarini regarded as an augury of evil, and indeed evil followed swiftly after. Before a year had passed he was dead, some holding that his death had been hastened by the ill conduct of his eldest son, and others whispering suspicions of poison.

Jerome and his young wife betook themselves to Milan, but this visit seems to have been fully as unprofitable as the one he had paid in 1529. In that year he had to face his first rejection by the College of Physicians, when he made application for admission; and there is indirect evidence that he now made a second application with no better result.[54] In any case his affairs were in a very bad way. If he had money in his pocket he would not keep long away from the gaming-table; and, with the weight of trouble ever bearing him down more and more heavily, it is almost certain that his spirits must have suffered, and that poor Lucia must have passed many an unhappy hour on account of his nervous irritability. Then the gates of his profession remained closed to him by the action of the College. The pretext the authorities gave for their refusal to admit him was his illegitimate birth; but it is not unlikely that they may have mistrusted as a colleague the son of Fazio Cardano, and that stories of the profligate life and the intractable temper of the candidate may have been brought to them.[55] His health suffered from the bad air of the city almost as severely as before, and Lucia, who was at this time pregnant, miscarried at four months, and shortly afterwards had a second misfortune of the same kind. His mother's temper was not of the sweetest, and it is quite possible that between her and her daughter-in-law there may have been strained relations. Cardan at any rate found that he must once more beat a retreat from Milan, wherefore, at the end of April 1533, he made up his mind to remove to Gallarate.

This town has already been mentioned as chief place of the district, from which the Cardan family took its origin. Before going thither Jerome had evidently weighed the matter well, and he has set down at some length the reasons which led him to make this choice. "Thus, acting under the reasons aforesaid (the family associations), I resolved to go to Gallarate, in order that I might have the enjoyment of four separate advantages which it offered. Firstly, that in the most healthy air of the place I might shake off entirely the distemper which I had contracted in Milan. Secondly, that I might earn something by my profession, seeing that then I should be free to practise. Thirdly, that there would be no need for me to pine away while I beheld those physicians, by whom I reckoned I had been despoiled, flourishing in wealth and in the high estimation of all men. Lastly, that by following a more frugal way of life, I might make what I possessed last the longer. For all things are cheaper in the country, since they have to be carried from the country into the town, and many necessaries may be had for the asking. Persuaded by these arguments, I went to this place, and I was not altogether deceived, seeing that I recovered my health, and the son—who was to be reft from me later on by the Senate—was born to me."[56]

Employment at Gallarate was, however, almost as scarce as it had been at Sacco, wherefore Jerome found leisure in plenty for literary work. He began a treatise on Fate; but, even had this been completed, it would scarcely have filled the empty larder by the proceeds of its sale. More profitable was some chance employment which was given to him by Filippo Archinto,[57] a generous and accomplished young nobleman of Milan, who was ambitious to figure as a writer on Astronomy, and, it may be remarked, Archinto's benefactions were not confined to the payment for the hack work which Jerome did for him at this period. Had it not been for his subsequent patronage and support, it is quite possible that Cardan would have gone under in the sea of adversity.

In spite of the cheapness of provisions at Gallarate, and of occasional meals taken gratis from the fields, complete destitution seemed to be only a matter of days, and just at this crisis, to add to his embarrassments—though he longed earnestly for the event—Lucia was brought to bed with her first-born living child on May 14, 1534. The child's birth was accompanied by divers omens, one of which the father describes, finding therein some premonition of future disaster. "I had great fear of his life until the fifteenth day of June, on which day, being a Sunday, he was baptized. The sun shone brightly into the bed-chamber: it was between the hours of eleven and twelve in the forenoon; and, according to custom, we were all gathered round the mother's bed except a young servant, the curtain was drawn away from the window and fastened to the wall, when suddenly a large wasp flew into the room, and circled round the infant. We were all greatly afeard for the child, but the wasp did him no hurt. The next moment it came against the curtain, making so great a noise that you would have said that a drum was being beaten, and all ran towards the place, but found no trace of the wasp. It could not have flown out of the room, because all eyes had been fixed upon it. Then all of us who were then present felt some foreboding of what subsequently came to pass, but did not deem that the end would be so bitter as it proved to be."[58]

The impulse which drives men in desperate straits to seek shelter in the streets of a city was as strong in Cardan's time as it is to-day. At Gallarate the last coin was now spent, and there was an extra mouth to feed. There seemed to be no other course open but another retreat to Milan. Archinto was rich in literary ambitions, which might perchance stimulate him to find farther work for the starving scholar: and there was Chiara also who would scarcely let her grandchild die of want. The revelation which Cardan makes of himself and of his way of life at this time is not one to enlist sympathy for him entirely; but it is not wanting in a note of pathetic sincerity. "For a long time the College at Milan refused to admit me, and during these days I was assuredly a spendthrift and heedless. In body I was weakly, and in estate plundered by thieves on all sides, yet I never grudged money for the buying of books. My residence at Gallarate brought me no profit, for in the whole nineteen months I lived there, I did not receive more than twenty-five crowns towards the rent of the house I hired. I had such ill luck with the dice that I was forced to pawn all my wife's jewels, and our very bed. If it is a wonder that I found myself thus bereft of all my substance, it is still more wonderful that I did not take to begging on account of my poverty, and a wonder greater still that I harboured in my mind no unworthy thoughts against my forefathers, or against right living, or against those honours which I had won—honours which afterwards stood me in good stead—but bore my misfortunes with mind undisturbed."[59]

Cardan's worldly fortunes were now at their lowest ebb. Burdened with a wife and child, he had found it necessary to return, after a second futile attempt to gain a living by his calling in a country town, to Milan, his "stony-hearted step-mother." If he had reckoned on his mother's bounty he was doomed to disappointment, for Chiara was an irritable woman, and as her son's temper was none of the sweetest, it is almost certain that they must have quarrelled occasionally. It is hard to believe that they could have been on good terms at this juncture, otherwise she would scarcely have allowed him to take his wife and child to what was then the public workhouse of the city;[60] but this place was his only refuge, and in October 1534 he was glad to shelter himself beneath its roof.

There was in Cardan's nature a strong vein of melancholy, and up to the date now under consideration he had been the victim of a fortune calculated to deepen rather than disperse his morbid tendencies. A proof of his high courage and dauntless perseverance may be deduced from the fact that neither poverty, nor the sense of repeated failure, nor the flouts of the Milanese doctors, prevailed at any time to quench in his heart the love of fame,[61] or to disabuse him of the conviction that he, poverty-stricken wretch as he was, would before long bind Fortune to his chariot-wheels, and would force the adverse world to acknowledge him as one of its master minds. The dawn was now not far distant, but the last hours of his night of misfortune were very dark. The worst of the struggle, as far as the world was concerned, was over, and the sharpest sorrows and the heaviest disgrace reserved for Cardan in the future were to be those nourished in his own household.

Writing of his way of life and of the vices and defects of his character, he says: "If a man shall fail in his carriage before the world as he fails in other things, who shall correct him? Thus I myself will do duty for that one leper who alone out of the ten who were healed came back to our Lord. By reasoning of this sort, Physicians and Astrologers trace back the origin of our natural habits to our primal qualities, to the training of our will, and to our occupations and conversation. In every man all these are found in proper ratio to the time of life of each individual; nevertheless it will be easy to discern marked variations in cases otherwise similar. Therefore it behoves us to hold fast to some guiding principle chosen out of these, and I on my part am inclined, as far as it may be allowed, to say with respect to all of them, γνω̑θι σεαυὸν.

"My own nature in sooth was never a mystery to myself. I was ever hot-tempered, single-minded, and given to women. From these cardinal tendencies there proceeded truculence of temper, wrangling, obstinacy, rudeness of carriage, anger, and an inordinate desire, or rather a headstrong passion, for revenge in respect to any wrong done to me; so that this inclination, which is censured by many, became to me a delight. To put it briefly, I held At vindicta bonum vita jucundius ipsa. As a general rule I went astray but seldom, though it is a common saying, 'Natura nostra prona est ad malum.' I am moreover truthful, mindful of benefits wrought to me, a lover of justice and of my own people, a despiser of money, a worshipper of that fame which defies death, prone to thrust aside what is commonplace, and still more disposed to treat mere trifles in the same way. Still, knowing well how great may be the power of little things at any moment during the course of an undertaking, I never make light of aught which may be useful. By nature I am prone to every vice and ill-doing except ambition, and I, if no one else does, know my own imperfections. But because of my veneration for God, and because I recognize the vanity and emptiness of all things of this sort, it often happens that, of my own free will, I forego certain opportunities for taking revenge which may be offered to me. I am timid, with a cold heart and a hot brain, given to reflection and the consideration of things many and mighty, and even of things which can never come to pass. I can even let my thoughts concern themselves with two distinct subjects at the same time. Those who throw out charges of garrulity and extravagance by way of contradicting any praise accorded to me, charge me with the faults of others rather than my own. I attack no man, I only defend myself.

"And what reason is there why I should spend myself in this cause since I have so often borne witness of the emptiness of this life of ours? My excuse must be that certain men have praised me, wherefore they cannot deem me altogether wicked. I have always trained myself to let my face contradict my thoughts. Thus while I can simulate what is not, I cannot dissimulate what is. To accomplish this is no difficult task if a man cultivates likewise the habit of hoping for nothing. By striving for fifteen years to compass this end and by spending much trouble over the same I at last succeeded. Urged on by this humour I sometimes go forth in rags, sometimes finely dressed, sometimes silent, sometimes talkative, sometimes joyful, sometimes sad; and on this account my two-fold mood shows everything double. In my youth I rarely spent any care in keeping my hair in order, because of my inclination for other pursuits more to my taste. My gait is irregular. I move now quickly, now slowly. When I am at home I go with my legs naked as far as the ankles. I am slack in duty and reckless in speech, and specially prone to show irritation over anything which may disgust or irk me."

The above-written self-description does not display a personality particularly attractive. Jerome Cardan was one of those men who experience a morbid gratification in cataloguing all their sinister points of character, and exaggerating them at the same time; and in this picture, as in many others scattered about the De Vita Propria, the shadows may have been put in too strongly.

In the foregoing pages reference was made to certain acts of benevolence done to Cardan by the family of Archinto. It is not impossible that the promises and persuasions of his young patron Filippo may have had some weight in inducing Jerome to shift his home once more. Whatever befell he could hardly make his case worse; but whether Filippo had promised help or not, he showed himself now a true and valuable friend. There was in Milan a public lectureship in geometry and astronomy supported by a small endowment left by a certain Tommaso Plat, and to this post, which happened opportunely to be vacant, Cardan was appointed by the good offices of Filippo Archinto. Yet even when he was literally a pauper he seems to have felt some scruples about accepting this office, but fortunately in this instance his poverty overcame his pride. The salary was indeed a very small one,[62] and the lecturer was not suffered to handle the whole of it, but it was at least liberal enough to banish the dread of starvation, and his duties, which consisted solely in the preparation and delivery of his lectures, did not debar him from literary work on his own account. Wherefore in his leisure time he worked hard at his desk.

Any differences which may have existed between him and his mother were now removed, for he took her to live with him, the household being made up of himself, his wife, his mother, a friend (a woman), a nurse, the little boy, a man- and maidservant, and a mule.[63] Possibly Chiara brought her own income with her, and thus allowed the establishment to be conducted on a more liberal scale. The Plat lectureship would scarcely have maintained three servants, and Jerome's gains from other sources must have been as yet very slender. His life at this time was a busy one, but he always contrived to portion out his days in such wise that certain hours were left for recreation. At such times as he was called upon to teach, the class-room, of course, had the first claims. After the lecture he would walk in the shade outside the city walls, then return to his dinner, then divert himself with music, and afterwards go fishing in the pools and streams hard by the town. In the course of time he obtained other employment, being appointed physician to the Augustinian friars. The Prior of this Order, Francesco Gaddi, was indeed his first patient of note. He tells how he cured this man of a biennial leprosy after treating him for six months;[64] adding that his labour was in vain, inasmuch as Gaddi died a violent death afterwards. The refusal of the College of Milan to admit him to membership did not forbid him to prescribe for whatever patients might like to consult him by virtue of his Paduan degree. He read voraciously everything which came in his way, and it must have been during these years that he stored his memory with that vast collection of facts out of which he subsequently compounded the row of tomes which form his legacy to posterity. Filippo Archinto was unfailing in his kindness, and Jerome at this time was fortunate enough to attract the attention of certain other Milanese citizens of repute who afterwards proved to be valuable friends; Ludovico Madio, Girolamo Guerrini a jeweller, Francesco Belloti, and Francesco della Croce. The last-named was a skilled jurisconsult, whose help proved of great service in a subsequent litigation between Jerome and the College of Physicians.

All his life long Cardan was a dreamer of dreams, and he gives an account of one of his visions in this year, 1534, which, whether regarded as an allegory or as a portent, is somewhat remarkable. "In the year 1534, when I was as it were groping in the dark, when I had settled naught as to my future life, and when my case seemed to grow more desperate day by day, I beheld in a dream the figure of myself running towards the base of a mountain which stood upon my right hand, in company with a vast crowd of people of every station and age and sex—women, men, old men, boys, infants, poor men and rich men, clad in raiment of every sort. I inquired whither we were all running, whereupon one of the multitude answered that we were all hastening on to death. I was greatly terrified at these words, when I perceived a mountain on my left hand. Then, having turned myself round so that it stood on my right side, I grasped the vines (which, here in the midst of the mountains and as far as the place wherein I stood, were covered with dry leaves, and bare of grapes, as we commonly see them in autumn) and began to ascend. At first I found this difficult, for the reason that the mountain was very steep round the base, but having surmounted this I made my way upward easily. When I had come to the summit it seemed that I was like to pass beyond the dictates of my own will. Steep naked rocks appeared on every side, and I narrowly escaped falling down from a great height into a gloomy chasm. So dreadful is all this that now, what though forty years have rolled away, the memory thereof still saddens and terrifies me. Then, having turned towards the right where I could see naught but a plain covered with heath, I took that path out of fear, and, as I wended thither in reckless mood, I found that I had come to the entrance of a rude hut, thatched with straw and reeds and rushes, and that I held by my right hand a boy about twelve years of age and clad in a grey garment. Then at this very moment I was aroused from sleep, and my dream vanished.

"In this vision was clearly displayed the deathless name which was to be mine, my life of heavy and ceaseless work, my imprisonment, my seasons of grievous terror and sadness, and my abiding-place foreshadowed as inhospitable, by the sharp stones I beheld: barren, by the want of trees and of all serviceable plants; but destined to be, nevertheless, in the end happy, and righteous, and easy. This dream told also of my lasting fame in the future, seeing that the vine yields a harvest every year. As to the boy, if he were indeed my good spirit, the omen was lucky, for I held him very close. If he were meant to foreshadow my grandson it would be less fortunate. That cottage in the desert was my hope of rest. That overwhelming horror and the sense of falling headlong may have had reference to the ruin of my son.[65]

"My second dream occurred a short time after. It seemed to me that my soul was in the heaven of the moon, freed from the body and all alone, and when I was bewailing my fate I heard the voice of my father, saying: 'God has appointed me as a guardian to you. All this region is full of spirits, but these you cannot see, and you must not speak either to me or to them. In this part of heaven you will remain for seven thousand years, and for the same time in certain other stars, until you come to the eighth. After this you shall enter the kingdom of God.' I read this dream as follows. My father's soul is my tutelary spirit. What could be dearer or more delightful? The Moon signifies Grammar; Mercury Geometry and Arithmetic; Venus Music, the Art of Divination, and Poetry; the Sun the Moral, and Jupiter the Natural, World; Mars Medicine; Saturn Agriculture, the knowledge of plants, and other minor arts. The eighth star stands for a gleaning of all mundane things, natural science, and various other studies. After dealing with these I shall at last find my rest with the Prince of Heaven."[66]

CHAPTER IV

Jerome Cardan is now standing on the brink of authorship. The very title of his first book, De Malo Recentiorum Medicorum Medendi Usu, gives plain indication of the humour which possessed him, when he formulated his subject and put it in writing. With his temper vexed by the persistent neglect and insult cast upon him by the Milanese doctors he would naturally sit down con amore to compile a list of the errors perpetrated by the ignorance and bungling of the men who affected to despise him, and if his object was to sting the hides of these pundits and arouse them to hostility yet more vehement, he succeeded marvellously well. He was enabled to launch his book rather by the strength of private friendship than by the hope of any commercial success. Whilst at Pavia he had become intimate with Ottaviano Scoto, a fellow-student who came from Venice, and in after times he found Ottaviano's purse very useful to his needs. Since their college days Ottaviano's father had died and had left his son to carry on his calling of printing. In 1536 Jerome bethought him of his friend, and sent him the MS. of the treatise which was to let the world learn with what little wisdom it was being doctored.[67]

Ottaviano seems to have expected no profit from this venture, which was manifestly undertaken out of a genuine desire to help his friend, and he generously bore all the costs. Cardan deemed that, whatever the result of the issue of the book might be, it would surely be to his benefit; he hazarded nothing, and the very publication of his work would give him at least notoriety. It would moreover give him the intense pleasure of knowing that he was repaying in some measure the debt of vengeance owing to his professional foes. The outcome was exactly the opposite of what printer and author had feared and hoped. The success of the book was rapid and great.

Ottaviano must soon have recouped all the cost of publication; and, while he was counting his money, the doctors everywhere were reading Jerome's brochure, and preparing a ruthless attack upon the daring censor, who, with the impetuosity of youth, had laid himself open to attack by the careless fashion in which he had compiled his work. He took fifteen days to write it, and he confesses in his preface to the revised edition that he found therein over three hundred mistakes of one sort or another. The attack was naturally led by the Milanese doctors. They demanded to be told why this man, who was not good enough to practise by their sanction, was good enough to lay down the laws for the residue of the medical world. They heaped blunder upon blunder, and held him up to ridicule with all the wealth of invective characteristic of the learned controversy of the age. Cardan was deeply humbled and annoyed. "For my opponents, seizing the opportunity, took occasion to assail me through the reasoning of this book, and cried out: 'Who can doubt that this man is mad? and that he would teach a method and a practice of medicine differing from our own, since he has so many hard things to say of our procedure.' And, as Galen said, I must in truth have appeared crazy in my efforts to contradict this multitude raging against me. For, as it was absolutely certain that either I or they must be in the wrong, how could I hope to win? Who would take my word against the word of this band of doctors of approved standing, wealthy, for the most part full of years, well instructed, richly clad and cultivated in their bearing, well versed in speaking, supported by crowds of friends and kinsfolk, raised by popular approval to high position, and, what was more powerful than all else, skilled in every art of cunning and deceit?"

Cardan had indeed prepared a bitter pill for his foes, but the draught they compelled him to swallow was hardly more palatable. The publication of the book naturally increased the difficulties of his position, and in this respect tended to make his final triumph all the more noteworthy.

It was in 1536 that Cardan made his first essay as an author.[68] The next three years of his life at Milan were remarkable as years of preparation and accumulation, rather than as years of achievement. He had struck his first blow as a reformer, and, as is often the lot of reformers, his sword had broken in his hand, and there now rested upon him the sense of failure as a superadded torment. Yet now and again a gleam of consolation would disperse the gloom, and advise him that the world was beginning to recognize his existence, and in a way his merits. In this same year he received an offer from Pavia of the Professorship of Medicine, but this he refused because he did not see any prospect of being paid for his services. His friend Filippo Archinto was loyal still, and zealous in working for his success, and as he had been recently promoted to high office in the Imperial service, his good word might be very valuable indeed. He summoned his protégé to join him at Piacenza, whither he had gone to meet Paul III., hoping to advance Cardan's interests with the Pope; but though Marshal Brissac, the French king's representative,[69] joined Archinto in advocating his cause, nothing was done, and Jerome returned disappointed to Milan.

In these months Cardan, disgusted by the failure of his late attack upon the fortress of medical authority, turned his back, for a time, upon the study of medicine, and gave his attention almost entirely to mathematics, in which his reputation was high enough to attract pupils, and he always had one or more of them in his house, the most noteworthy of whom was Ludovico Ferrari of Bologna, who became afterwards a mathematician of repute, and a teacher both at Milan and Bologna. While he was working at the De Malo Medendi, he began a treatise upon Arithmetic, which he dedicated to his friend Prior Gaddi; but this work was not published till 1539. In 1536 he first heard a report of a fresh and important discovery in algebra, made by one Scipio Ferreo of Bologna; the prologue to one of the most dramatic incidents in his career, an incident which it will be necessary to treat at some length later on.

Cardan was well aware that his excursions into astrology worked to his prejudice in public esteem, but in spite of this he could not refrain therefrom. It was during the plentiful leisure of this period that he cast the horoscope of Jesus Christ, a feat which subsequently brought upon him grave misfortune; a few patients came to him, moved no doubt by the spirit which still prompts people suffering from obscure diseases to consult professors of healing who are either in revolt or unqualified in preference to going to the orthodox physician. In connection with this irregular practice of his he gives a curious story about a certain Count Borromeo. "In 1536, while I was attending professionally in the house of the Borromei, it chanced that just about dawn I had a dream in which I beheld a serpent of enormous bulk, and I was seized with fear lest I should meet my death therefrom. Shortly afterwards there came a messenger to summon me to see the son of Count Carlo Borromeo. I went to the boy, who was about seven years old, and found him suffering from a slight distemper, but on feeling his pulse I perceived that it failed at every fourth beat. His mother, the Countess Corona, asked me how he fared, and I answered that there was not much fever about him; but that, because his pulse failed at every fourth beat, I was in fear of something, but what it might be I knew not rightly (but I had not then by me Galen's books on the indications of the pulse). Therefore, as the patient's state changed not, I determined on the third day to give him in small doses the drug called Diarob: cum Turbit: I had already written my prescription, and the messenger was just starting with it to the pharmacy, when I remembered my dream. 'How do I know,' said I to myself, 'that this boy may not be about to die as prefigured by the portent above written? and in that case these other physicians who hate me so bitterly, will maintain he died through taking this drug.' I called to the messenger, and said there was wanting in the prescription something which I desired to add. Then I privately tore up what I had written, and wrote out another made of pearls, of the horn of unicorn,[70] and certain gems. The powder was given, and was followed by vomiting. The bystanders perceived that the boy was indeed sick, whereupon they called in three of the chief physicians, one of whom was in a way friendly to me. They saw the description of the medicine, and demanded what I would do now. Now although two of these men hated me, it was not God's will that I should be farther attacked, and they not only praised the medicine, but ordered that it should be repeated. This was the saving of me. When I went again in the evening I understood the case completely. The following morning I was summoned at daybreak, and found the boy battling with death, and his father lying in tears. 'Behold him,' he cried, 'the boy whom you declared to ail nothing' (as if indeed I could have said such a thing); 'at least you will remain with him as long as he lives.' I promised that I would, and a little later the boy tried to rise, crying out the while. They held him down, and cast all the blame upon me. What more is there to say? If there had been found any trace of that drug Diarob: cum Turbit: (which in sooth was not safe) it would have been all over with me, since Borromeo all his life would either have launched against me complaints grave enough to make all men shun me, or another Canidia, more fatal than African serpents, would have breathed poison upon me."[71]

In this same year, 1536, Lucia brought forth another child, a daughter, and it was about this time that Cardan first attracted the attention of Alfonso d'Avalos, the Governor of Milan, and an intimacy began which, albeit fruitless at first, was destined to be of no slight service to Jerome at the crisis of his fortunes.[72] In the following year, in 1537, he made a beginning of two of his books, which were subsequently found worthy of being finished, and which may still be read with a certain interest: the treatises De Sapientia and De Consolatione. Of the last-named, he remarks that it pleased no one, forasmuch as it appealed not to those who were happy, and the wretched rejected it as entirely inadequate to give them solace in their evil case. In this year he made another attempt to gain admission to the College at Milan, and was again rejected; the issue of the De Malo Medendi was too recent, and it needed other and more potent influences than those exercised by mere merit, to appease the fury of his rivals and to procure him due status. But it would appear that, in 1536 or 1537, he negotiated with the College to obtain a quasi-recognition on conditions which he afterwards describes as disgraceful to himself, and that this was granted to him.[73]

Whatever his qualifications may have been, Cardan had no scruples in treating the few patients who came to him. The first case he notes is that of Donato Lanza,[74] a druggist, who had suffered for many years with blood-spitting, which ailment he treated successfully. Success of this sort was naturally helpful, but far more important than Lanza's cure was the introduction given by the grateful patient to the physician, commending him to Francesco Sfondrato, a noble Milanese, a senator, and a member of the Emperor's privy council. The eldest son of this gentleman had suffered many months from convulsions, and Cardan worked a cure in his case without difficulty. Shortly afterwards another child, only ten months old, was attacked by the same complaint, and was treated by Luca della Croce, the procurator of the College of Physicians, of which Sfondrato was a patron. As the attack threatened to be a serious one, Della Croce recommended that another physician, Ambrogio Cavenago, should be called in, but the father, remembering Cardan's cure of Lanza, wished for him as well. The description of the meeting of the doctors round the sick child's bed, of their quotations from Hippocrates, of the uncertainty and helplessness of the orthodox practitioners, and of the ready resource of the free-lance—who happens also to be the teller of the story—is a richly typical one.[75] "We, the physicians and the father of the child, met about seven in the morning, and Della Croce made a few general observations on death, for he knew that Sfondrato was a sensible man, and he himself was both honoured and learned. Cavenago kept silence at this stage, because the last word had been granted to him. Then I said, 'Do you not see that the child is suffering from Opisthotonos?' whereupon the first physician stood as one dazed, as if I were trying to trouble his wits by my hard words. But Della Croce at once swept aside all uncertainty by saying, 'He means the backward contraction of the muscles.' I confirmed his words, and added, 'I will show you what I mean.' Whereupon I raised the boy's head, which the doctors and all the rest believed was hanging down through weakness, and by its own weight, and bade them put it into its former position. Then Sfondrato turned to me, and said, 'As you have discovered what the disease is, tell us likewise what is the remedy therefor.' Since no one else spoke, I turned towards him and—careful lest I should do hurt to the credit I had gained already,—I said, 'You know what Hippocrates lays down in a case like this—febrem convulsioni'—and I recited the aphorism. Then I ordered a fomentation, and an application of lint moistened with linseed-oil and oil of lilies, and gave directions that the child should be gently handled until such time as the neck should be restored; that the nurse should eat no meat, and that the child should be nourished entirely by the milk of her breast, and not too much of that; that it should be kept in its cradle in a warm place, and rocked gently till it should fall asleep. After the other physicians had gone, I remember that the father of the child said to me, 'I give you this child for your own,' and that I answered, 'You are doing him an ill turn, in that you are supplanting his rich father by a poor one.' He answered, 'I am sure that you would care for him as if he were your own, fearing naught that you might thereby give offence to these others' (meaning the physicians). I said, 'It would please me well to work with them in everything, and to win their support.' I thus blended my words, so that he might understand I neither despaired of the child's cure, nor was quite confident thereanent. The cure came to a favourable end; for, after the fourteenth day of the fever—the weather being very warm—the child got well in four days' time. Now as I review the circumstances, I am of opinion that it was not because I perceived what the disease really was, for I might have done so much by reason of my special practice; nor because I healed the child, for that might have been attributed to chance; but because the child got well in four days, whereas his brother lay ill for six months, and was then left half dead, that his father was so much amazed at my skill, and afterwards preferred me to all others. That he thought well of me is certain, because Della Croce himself, during the time of his procuratorship, was full of spite and jealousy against me, and declared in the presence of Cavenago and of Sfondrato, that he would not, under compulsion, say a word in favour of a man like me, one whom the College regarded with disfavour. Whereupon Sfondrato saw that the envy and jealousy of the other physicians was what kept me out of the College, and not the circumstances of my birth. He told the whole story to the Senate, and brought such influence to bear upon the Governor of the Province and other men of worship, that at last the entrance to the College was opened to me."

Up to the time of his admission to the College, Jerome had never felt that he could depend entirely upon medicine for his livelihood. He now determined to publish his Practica Arithmeticæ, the book which he had prepared pari passu with the ill-starred De Malo Medendi. It seems to have been thoroughly revised and corrected, and was finally published in 1539, in Milan; Cardan only received ten crowns for his work, but the sudden fame he achieved as a mathematician ought to have set him on firm ground. His friends were still working to secure for him benefits yet more substantial. Alfonso d'Avalos, Francesco della Croce, the jurisconsult whose name has already been mentioned, and the senator Sfondrato, were doing their best to bring the physicians of the city into a more reasonable temper, and they finally succeeded in 1539; when, after having been denied admission for twelve years, Jerome Cardan became a member of the College, and a sharer in all the privileges appertaining thereto.

Though Cardan was now a fully qualified physician, he spent his time for the next year or two rather with letters than with medicine. He worked hard at Greek, and as the result of his studies published somewhat prematurely a treatise, De Immortalitate Animorum, a collection of extracts from Greek writers which Julius Cæsar Scaliger with justice calls a confused farrago of other men's learning.[76] He published also about this period the treatise on Judicial Astrology, and the Essay De Consolatione, the only one of his books which has been found worthy of an English translation.[77] In 1541 he became Rector of the College of Physicians, but there is no record of any increase in the number of his patients by reason of this superadded dignity. A passage in the De Vita Propria, written with even more than his usual brutal candour, gives a graphic view of his manner of life at this period. "It was in the summer of the year 1543, a time when it was my custom to go every day to the house of Antonio Vicomercato, a gentleman of the city, and to play chess with him from morning till night. As we were wont to play for one real, or even three or four, on each game, I, seeing that I was generally the winner, would as a rule carry away with me a gold piece after each day's play, sometimes more and sometimes less. In the case of Vicomercato it was a pleasure and nothing else to spend money in this wise; but in my own there was an element of conflict as well; and in this manner I lost my self-respect so completely that, for two years and more, I took no thought of practising my art, nor considered that I was wasting all my substance—save what I made by play—that my good name and my studies as well would suffer shipwreck. But on a certain day towards the end of August, a new humour seized Vicomercato (either advisedly on account of the constant loss he suffered, or perhaps because he thought his decision would be for my benefit), a determination from which he was to be moved neither by arguments, nor adjurations, nor abuse. He forced me to swear that I would never again visit his house for the sake of gaming, and I, on my part, swore by all the gods as he wished. That day's play was our last, and thenceforth I gave myself up entirely to my studies."[78]

But these studies unfortunately were not of a nature to keep the wolf from the door; and Jerome, albeit now a duly qualified physician, and known to fame as a writer on Mathematics far beyond the bounds of Italy, was well-nigh as poor as ever. His mother had died several years before, in 1537; but what little money she may have left would soon have been wasted in gratifying his extravagant taste for costly things,[79] and at the gaming-table. He found funds, however, for a journey to Florence, whither he went to see d'Avalos, who was a generous, open-handed man, and always ready to put his purse at the service of one whom he regarded as an honour to his city and country. There can be little doubt that he helped Cardan liberally at this juncture. The need for a loan was assuredly urgent enough. The recent resumption of hostilities between the French and the Imperialists had led to intolerable taxation throughout the Milanese provinces, and in consequence of dearth of funds in 1543, the Academy at Pavia was forced to close its class-rooms, and leave its teachers unpaid. The greater part of the professors migrated to Pisa; and the Faculty of Medicine, then vacant, was, pro formâ, transferred to Milan. This chair was now offered to Cardan. He was in desperate straits—a third child had been born this year—and, though there must have been even less chance of getting his salary paid than when he had refused it before, he accepted the post, explaining that he took this step because there was now no need for him to leave Milan, or danger that he would be rated as an itinerant teacher. It is not improbable that he may have been led to accept the office on account of the additional dignity it would give to him as a practising physician. When, a little later on, the authorities began to talk of returning to Pavia, he was in no mind to follow them, giving as a reason that, were he to leave Milan, he would lose his stipend for the Plat lectureship, and be put to great trouble in the transport of his household, and perhaps suffer in reputation as well. The Senate was evidently anxious to retain his services. They bade him consider the matter, promising to send on a certain date to learn his decision; and, as fate would have it, the question was conveniently decided for him by a portent.

"On the night before the day upon which my answer was to be sent to the Senate to say what course I was going to take, the whole of the house fell down into a heap of ruins, and no single thing was left unwrecked, save the bed in which I and my wife and my children were sleeping. Thus the step, which I should never have taken of my own free will or without some sign, I was compelled to take by the course of events. This thing caused great wonder to all those who heard of it."[80]

This was in 1544. Jerome hesitated no longer, and went forthwith to Pavia as Professor of Medicine at a salary of two hundred and forty gold crowns per annum; but, for the first year at least, this salary was not paid; and the new professor lectured for a time to empty benches; but, as he was at this time engaged in the final stage of his great work on Algebra, the leisure granted to him by the neglect of the students must have been most acceptable. He published at this time a treatise called Contradicentium Medicorum, and in 1545 his Algebra or Liber Artis Magnæ was issued from the press by Petreius of Nuremberg. The issue of this book, by which alone the name of Cardan holds a place in contemporary learning, is connected with an episode of his life important enough to demand special and detailed consideration in a separate place.

His practice in medicine was now a fairly lucrative one, but his extravagant tastes and the many vices with which he charges himself would have made short work of the largest income he could possibly have earned, consequently poverty was never far removed from the household. Hitherto his reputation as a man of letters and a mathematician had exceeded his fame as a doctor; for, even after he had taken up his residence as Professor of Medicine at Padua, many applications were made to him for his services in other branches of learning. It was fortunate indeed that he had let his reading take a somewhat eclectic course, for medicine at this time seemed fated to play him false. At the end of 1544 no salary was forthcoming at Pavia, so he abandoned his class-room, and returned to Milan.

During his residence there, in the summer of 1546, Cardinal Moroni, acting on behalf of Pope Paul III., made an offer for his services as a teacher of mathematics, accompanied by terms which, as he himself admits, were not to be despised; but, as was his wont, he found some reason for demur, and ultimately refused the offer. In his Harpocratic vein he argued, "This pope is an old man, a tottering wall, as it were. Why should I abandon a certainty for an uncertainty?"[81] The certainty he here alludes to must have been the salary for the Plat lectureship; and, as this emolument was a very small one, it would appear that he did not rate at a high figure any profits which might come to him in the future from his acceptance of the Pope's offer; but, as he admits subsequently, he did not then fully realize the benevolence of the Cardinal who approached him on the subject, or the magnificent patronage of the Farnesi.[82] It is quite possible that this refusal of his may have been caused by a reluctance to quit Milan, the city which had treated him in such cruel and inhospitable fashion, just at the time when he had become a man of mark. In the arrogance of success it was doubtless a keen pleasure to let his fellow-townsmen see that the man upon whom they had heaped insult after insult for so many years was one who could afford to let Popes and Cardinals pray for his services in vain. But whatever may have been his humour, he resolved to remain in Milan; and, as he had no other public duty to perform except the delivery of the Plat lectures, he had abundant leisure to spend upon the many and important works he had on hand at this season.

Cardan had now achieved European fame, and was apparently on the high road to fortune, but on the very threshold of his triumph a great sorrow and misfortune befell him, the full effect of which he did not experience all at once. In the closing days of 1546 he lost his wife. There is very scant record of her life and character in any of her husband's writings,[83] although he wrote at great length concerning her father; and the few words that are to be found here and there favour the view that she was a good wife and mother. That Jerome could have been an easy husband to live with under any circumstances it is hard to believe. Lucia's life, had it been prolonged, might have been more free of trouble as the wife of a famous and wealthy physician; but it was her ill fortune to be the companion of her husband only in those dreary, terrible days at Sacco and Gallarate, and in the years of uncertainty which followed the final return to Milan. In the last-named period there was at least the Plat lectureship standing between them and starvation; but children increased the while in the nursery, and manuscripts in the desk of the physician without patients, and Lucia's short life was all consumed in this weary time of waiting for fame and fortune which, albeit hovering near, seemed destined to mock and delude the seeker to the end. Cardan was before all else a man of books and of the study, and it is not rare to find that one of this sort makes a harsh unsympathetic husband. The qualities which he attributes to himself in his autobiography suggest that to live with a man cursed with such a nature would have been difficult even in prosperity, and intolerable in trouble and privation. But fretful and irascible as Cardan shows himself to have been, there was a warm-hearted, affectionate side to his nature. He was capable of steadfast devotion to all those to whom his love had ever been given. His reverence for the memory of his tyrannical and irascible father had been noted already, and a still more remarkable instance of his fidelity and love will have to be considered when the time comes to deal with the crowning tragedy of his life. If Cardan had this tender side to his nature, if he could speak tolerant and even laudatory words concerning such a father as Fazio Cardano, and show evidences of a love strong as death in the fight he made for the life of his ill-starred and unworthy son, it may be hoped—in spite of his almost unnatural silence concerning her—that he gave Lucia some of that tenderness and sympathy which her life of hard toil and heavy sacrifice so richly deserved; and that even in the days when he sold her trinkets to pay his gambling losses, she was not destined to weep the bitter tears of a neglected wife. If her early married life had been full of care and travail, if she died when a better day seemed to be dawning, she was at least spared the supreme sorrow and disgrace which was destined to fall so soon upon the household. Judging by what subsequently happened, it will perhaps be held that fate, in cutting her thread of life, was kinder to her than to her husband, when it gave him a longer term of years under the sun.