mar him both in body and
mind. "Wherefore I ought, according to every rule, to have been born a
monster, and, under the circumstances, it was no marvel that it was found
necessary to tear me from the womb in order to bring me into the world.
Thus was I born, or rather dragged from my mother's body. I was to all
outward seeming dead, with my head covered with black curly hair. I was
brought round by being plunged in a bath of heated wine, a remedy which
might well have proved hurtful to any other infant. My mother lay three
whole days in labour, but at last gave birth to me, a living child."[12]

The sinister influences of the stars soon began to manifest their power.
Before Jerome had been many days in the world the woman into whose charge
he had been given was seized with the plague and died the same day,
whereupon his mother took him home with her. The first of his bodily
ailments,--the catalogue of the same which he subsequently gives is indeed
a portentous one,[13]--was an eruption of carbuncles on the face in the
form of a cross, one of the sores being set on the tip of the nose; and
when these disappeared, swellings came. Before the boy was two months old
his godfather, Isidore di Resta of Ticino, gave him into the care of
another nurse who lived at Moirago, a town about seven miles from Milan,
but here again ill fortune attended him. His body began to waste and his
stomach to swell because the nurse who gave him suck was herself
pregnant.[14] A third foster-mother was found for him, and he remained
with her till he was weaned in his third year.

When he was four years of age he was taken to Milan to be under the care
of his mother, who, with her sister, Margarita, was living in Fazio's
house; but whether she was at this time legally married to him or not
there is no evidence to show. In recording this change he remarks that he
now came under a gentler discipline from the hands of his mother and his
aunt, but immediately afterwards proclaims his belief that the last-named
must have been born without a gall bladder, a remark somewhat difficult to
apply, seeing he frequently complains afterwards of her harshness. It must
be remembered, however, that these details are taken from a record of the
writer's fifth year set down when he was past seventy.[15] He quotes
certain lapses from kindly usage, as for instance when it happened that he
was beaten by his father or his mother without a cause. After much
chastisement h