Jerome Cardan: A Biographical Study. W. G. Waters
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