ellow-physicians, nor the ill things falsely spoken
against me, nor all the measureless mass of possible evil, could have
brought me to such despair, and hatred of life, and distaste of all
pleasure, and lasting sorrow. I bitterly wept this misery, that I must
needs be a laughing-stock, that marriage must be denied me, and that I
must ever live in solitude. You ask for the cause of this misfortune, a
matter which I am quite unable to explain. Because of the reasons just
mentioned, and because I dreaded that men should know how grave was the
ill afflicting me, I shunned the society of women; and, on account of this
habit, the same miserable public scandal which I desired so earnestly to
avoid, arose concerning me, and brought upon me the suspicion of still
more nefarious practices: in sooth it seemed that there was no further
calamity left for me to endure."[49] After reading these words, it is hard
to believe that a man, afflicted with a misfortune which he characterizes
in these terms, could have been even moderately happy; much less in that
state of bliss which he sits down to describe forty years afterwards.

But the end of his life at Sacco was fated to be happier than the
beginning, and it is possible that memories of the last months he spent
there may have helped to colour with rosy tint the picture of happiness
recently referred to. In the first place he was suddenly freed from his
physical infirmity, and shortly after his restoration he met and married
the woman who, as long as she lived with him, did all that was possible to
make him happy. Every momentous event of Cardan's life--and many a
trifling one as well--was heralded by some manifestation of the powers
lying beyond man's cognition. In writing about the signs and tokens which
served as premonitions of his courtship and marriage, he glides easily
into a description of the events themselves in terms which are worth
producing. "In times past I had my home in Sacco, and there I led a joyful
life, as if I were a man unvexed by misfortune (I recall this circumstance
somewhat out of season, but the dream I am about to tell of seems only too
appropriate to the occasion), or a mortal made free of the habitations of
the blest, or rather of some region of delight. Then, on a certain night,
I seemed to find myself in a pleasant garden, beautiful exceedingly,
decked with flowers and filled with fruits of divers sorts, and a soft air
breathed around. So lovely was it al