land. He gives a synopsis of all the sciences he had ever
studied--Theology, Dialectics, Arithmetic, Music, Optics, Astronomy,
Astrology, Geometry, Chiromancy, Agriculture, Medicine, passing on to
treat of Magic, portents and warnings, and of his own experience of the
same at the crucial moments of his life. He ends by a reference to an
incident already chronicled in the _De Vita Propria_,[175] how he escaped
death or injury from a falling mass of masonry by crossing the street in
obedience to an impulse he could not explain, and speculates why God, who
was able to save him on this occasion with so little trouble, should have
let him rush on and court the overwhelming stroke which ultimately laid
him low.

FOOTNOTES:

[162] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xxxii. p. 100.

[163] _De Vita Propria_, ch. iv. p. 16: "cum Scotorum Regina cujus levirum
curaveram." Cardan had probably prescribed for a brother of the Duc de
Longueville, the first husband of Mary of Guise, during his sojourn in
Paris.

[164] _Geniturarum Exempla_, p. 459.

[165] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xl. p. 137.

[166] _Commentaria in Ptolemaei de Astrorum Judiciis_ (Basil, 1554). He
wrote these notes while going down the Loire in company with Cassanate on
his way from Lyons to Paris in 1552.--_De Vita Propria_, ch. xlv. p. 175.

He gives an interesting account (_Opera_, tom. i. p. 110) as to how the
book first came under his notice. The day before he quitted Lyons with
Cassanate, a school-master came to ask for advice, which Cardan gave
gratis. Then the patient, knowing perhaps the physician's taste for the
marvellous, related how there was a certain boy in the place who could see
spirits by looking into an earthen vessel, but Cardan was little impressed
by what he saw, and began to talk with the school-master about Archimedes.
The school-master brought out a work of the Greek philosopher with which
was bound up the _Ptolemaei Libri de Judiciis_. Cardan fastened upon it at
once, and wanted to buy it, but the school-master insisted that he should
take it as a gift. He declares that his Commentaries thereupon are the
most perfect of all his writings. The book contains his famous Nativity of
Christ. A remark in _De Libris Propriis_ (cf. _Opera_, tom. i. p. 67)
indicates that there was an earlier edition of Ptolemy, printed at Milan
at Cardan's own cost, because when he saw the numerous mistakes made by
Ottaviano Scoto in printing the _De Malo Medendi_ and the _De
Co