e 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 m