Jerome Cardan | Page 5

often performs its task more
thoroughly than the finished painting, and Cardan's autobiography is a
fragment of this sort. It lets pass in order of procession the moody
neglected boy in Fazio's ill-ordered house, the student at Pavia, the
youthful Rector of the Paduan Gymnasium, plunging when just across
the threshold of life into criminal excess of Sardanapalean luxury, the
country doctor at Sacco and afterwards at Gallarate, starving amongst
his penniless patients, the University professor, the famous physician
for whose services the most illustrious monarchs in Europe came as
suppliants in vain, the father broken by family disgrace and calamity,
and the old man, disgraced and suspected and harassed by persecutors
who shot their arrows in the dark, but at the same time tremblingly
anxious to set down the record of his days before the night should
descend.
Until he had completed his nineteenth year Jerome continued to dwell
under the roof which for the time being might give shelter to his
parents. The emoluments which Fazio drew from his profession were
sufficient for the family wants--he himself being a man of simple tastes;
wherefore Jerome was not forced, in addition to his other youthful
troubles, to submit to that execrata paupertas and its concomitant
miseries which vexed him in later years. To judge from his conduct in
the matter of Otto Cantone's estate, Fazio seems to have been as great a
despiser of wealth as his son proved to be afterwards. His virtue, such
as it was, must have been the outcome of one of those hard cold natures,
with wants few and trifling, and none of those tastes which cry out
daily for some new toy, only to be procured by money. The fact that he
made his son run after him through the streets of Milan in place of a
servant is not a conclusive proof of avarice; it may just as likely mean
that the old man was indifferent and callous to whatever suffering he
might inflict upon his young son, and indisposed to trouble himself
about searching for a hireling to carry his bag. The one indication we
gather of his worldly wisdom is his dissatisfaction that his son was
firmly set to follow medicine rather than jurisprudence, a step which
would involve the loss of the stipend of one hundred crowns a year

which he drew for his lectureship, an income which he had hoped
might be continued to a son of his after his death.[19]
Amidst the turmoil and discomfort of what must at the best have been a
most ill-regulated household, the boy's education was undertaken by his
father in such odds and ends of time as he might find to spare for the
task.[20] What with the hardness and irritability of the teacher, and the
peevishness inseparable from the pupil's physical feebleness and
morbid overwrought mental habit, these hours of lessons must have
been irksome to both, and of little benefit. "In the meantime my father
taught me orally the Latin tongue as well as the rudiments of
Arithmetic, Geometry, and Astrology. But he allowed me to sleep well
into the day, and he himself would always remain abed till nine o'clock.
But one habit of his appeared to me likely to lead to grave
consequences, to wit the way he had of lending to others anything
which belonged to him. Part of these loans, which were made to
insolvents, he lost altogether; and the residue, lent to divers persons in
high places, could only be recovered with much trouble and no little
danger, and with loss of all interest on the same. I know not whether he
acted in this wise by the advice of that familiar spirit[21] whose
services he retained for eight-and-thirty years. What afterwards came to
pass showed that my father treated me, his son, rightly in all things
relating to education, seeing that I had a keen intelligence. For with
boys of this sort it is well to make use of the bit as though you were
dealing with mules. Beyond this he was witty and diverting in his
conversation, and given to the telling of stories and strange occurrences
well worth notice. He told me many things about familiar spirits, but
what part of these were true I know not; but assuredly tales of this sort,
wonderful in themselves and artfully put together, delighted me
marvellously.
"But what chiefly deserved condemnation in my father was that he
brought up certain other youths with the intention of leaving to them
his goods in case I should die; which thing, in sooth, meant nothing less
than the exposure of myself to open danger through plots of the parents
of the boys aforesaid, on account of the prize offered. Over this affair
my father and my mother quarrelled