Jerome Cardan | Page 6

grievously, and finally decided to

live apart. Whereupon my mother, stricken by this mental vexation, and
troubled at intervals with what I deem to have been an hysterical
affection, fell one day full on the back of her neck, and struck her head
upon the floor, which was composed of tiles. It was two or three hours
before she came round, and indeed her recovery was little short of
miraculous, especially as at the end of her seizure she foamed much at
the mouth.
"In the meantime I altered the whole drift of this tragedy by a pretended
adoption of the religious life, for I became for a time a member of the
mendicant Franciscan brotherhood. But at the beginning of my
twenty-first year[22] I went to the Gymnasium at Pavia, whereupon my
father, feeling my absence, was softened towards me, and a
reconciliation between him and my mother took place.
"Before this time I had learnt music, my mother and even my father
having secretly given me money for the same; my father likewise paid
for my instruction in dialectics. I became so proficient in this art that I
taught it to certain other youths before I went to the University. Thus he
sent me there endowed with the means of winning an honest living; but
he never once spake a word to me concerning this matter, bearing
himself always towards me in considerate, kindly, and pious wise.
"For the residue of his days (and he lived on well-nigh four more years)
his life was a sad one, as if he would fain let it be known to the world
how much he loved me.[23] Moreover, when by the working of fate I
returned home while he lay sick, he besought, he commanded, nay he
even forced me, all unwilling, to depart thence, what though he knew
his last hour was nigh, for the reason that the plague was in the city,
and he was fain that I should put myself beyond danger from the same.
Even now my tears rise when I think of his goodwill towards me. But,
my father, I will do all the justice I can to thy merit and to thy paternal
care; and, as long as these pages may be read, so long shall thy name
and thy virtues be celebrated. He was a man not to be corrupted by any
offering whatsoever, and indeed a saint. But I myself was left after his
death involved in many lawsuits, having nothing clearly secured except
one small house."[24]

Fazio contracted a close intimacy with a certain Galeazzo Rosso, a man
clever as a smith, and endowed with mechanical tastes which no doubt
helped to secure him Fazio's friendship. Galeazzo discovered the
principle of the water-screw of Archimedes before the description of
the same, written in the books of the inventor, had been published. He
also made swords which could be bent as if they were of lead, and
sharp enough to cut iron like wood. He performed a more wonderful
feat in fashioning iron breast-plates which would resist the impact of
red-hot missiles. In the De Sapientia, Cardan records that when
Galeazzo perfected his water-screw, he lost his wits for joy.
Fazio took no trouble to teach his son Latin,[25] though the learned
language would have been just as necessary for the study of
jurisprudence as for any other liberal calling, and Jerome did not begin
to study it systematically till he was past nineteen years of age.
Through some whim or prejudice the old man refused for some time to
allow the boy to go to the University, and when at last he gave his
consent he still fought hard to compel Jerome to qualify himself in
jurisprudence; but here he found himself at issue with a will more
stubborn than his own. Cardan writes: "From my earliest youth I let
every action of mine be regulated in view of the after course of my life,
and I deemed that as a career medicine would serve my purpose far
better than law, being more appropriate for the end I had in view, of
greater interest to the world at large, and likely to last as long as time
itself. At the same time I regarded it as a study which embodied the
nobler principles, and rested upon the ground of reason (that is upon
the eternal laws of Nature) rather than upon the sanction of human
opinion. On this account I took up medicine rather than jurisprudence,
nay I almost entirely cast aside, or even fled from the company of those
friends of mine who followed the law, rejecting at the same time wealth
and power and honour. My father, when he heard that I had abandoned
the study of law to follow philosophy, wept