lp indeed proved
of very substantial benefit.

"But the interpretation of my dreams did not work itself out entirely in
the after life of my wife; it made itself felt likewise in the lives of my
children. My wife lived with me fifteen years, and alas! this ill-advised
marriage was the cause of all the misfortunes which subsequently happened
to me. These must have come about either by the working of the divine
will, or as the recompense due for some ill deeds wrought by myself or by
my forefathers."[51]

The dream aforesaid was not the only portent having reference to his
marriage. After describing shakings and tremblings of his bed, for which
indeed a natural cause was not far to seek, he tells how in 1531 a certain
dog, of gentle temper as a rule, and quiet, kept up a persistent howling
for a long time; how some ravens perched on the house-top and began
croaking in an unusual manner; and how, when his servant was breaking up a
faggot, some sparks of fire flew out of the same; whereupon, "by an
unlooked-for step I married a wife, and from that time divers misfortunes
have attended me."[52] Lucia, the wife of his choice, was the eldest
daughter of Altobello Bandarini, who had, besides her, three daughters and
four sons. Jerome, as it has been already noted, was possessed with a fear
lest he should be burdened by his brothers- and sisters-in-law after his
marriage; but, considering that he was a young unknown physician, without
either money or patients, and that Bandarini was a man of position and
repute, with some wealth and more shrewdness, the chances were that the
burden would lie on the other side. Cardan seems to have inherited Fazio's
contempt for wealth, or at least to have made a profession thereof; for,
in chronicling the event of his marriage, he sets down, with a certain
degree of pomposity, that he took a wife without a dower on account of a
certain vow he had sworn.[53] If the bride was penniless the father-in-law
was wealthy, and the last-named fact might well have proved a powerful
argument to induce Cardan to remain at Sacco, albeit he had little scope
for his calling. That he soon determined to quit the place, is an evidence
of his independence of spirit, and of his disinclination to sponge upon
his well-to-do connections. Bandarini, when this scheme was proposed to
him, vetoed it at once. He was unwilling to part with his daughter, and
possibly he may have taken a fancy to his son-in-law, for Cardan has