gaze upon these marvels; wherefore my Aunt
Margaret asked me more than once whether I saw anything. I, though I was
then only a child, deliberated over this question of hers before I
replied, saying to myself: 'If I tell her the facts she will be wroth at
the thing--whatever it may be--which is the cause of these phantasms, and
will deprive me of this delight.' And then I seemed to see flowers of all
kinds, and four-footed beasts, and birds; but all these, though they were
fashioned most beautifully, were lacking in colour, for they were things
of air. Therefore I, who neither as a boy nor as an old man ever learned
to lie, stood silent for some time. Then my aunt said--'Boy, what makes
you stare thus and stand silent?' I know not what answer I made, but I
think I said nothing at all. In my dreams I frequently saw what seemed to
be a cock, which I feared might speak to me in a human voice. This in
sooth came to pass later on, and the words it spake were threatening ones,
but I cannot now recall what I may have heard on these occasions."[32]

With a brain capable of such remarkable exercises as the above-written
vision, living his life in an atmosphere of books, and with all games and
relaxations dear to boys of his age denied to him, it was no marvel that
Jerome should make an early literary essay on his own account. The death
of a young kinsman, Niccolo Cardano,[33] suggested to him a theme which he
elaborated in a tract called _De immortalitate paranda_, a work which
perished unlamented by its author, and a little later he wrote a treatise
on the calculation of the distances between the various heavenly
bodies.[34] But he put his mathematical skill to other and more sinister
uses than this; for, having gained practical experience at the
gaming-tables, he combined this experience with his knowledge of the
properties of numbers, and wrote a tract on games of chance. Afterwards he
amplified this into his book, _Liber de Ludo Aleae_.

With this equipment and discipline Jerome went to Pavia in 1520. He found
lodging in the house of Giovanni Ambrogio Targio, and until the end of his
twenty-first year he spent all his time between Pavia and Milan. By this
date he had made sufficiently good use of his time to let the world see of
what metal he was formed, for in the year following he had advanced far
enough in learning to dispute in public, to teach Euclid in the Gymnasium,
and to take occasional classes in Dialectics and Elem