dissimulate what is. To accomplish this is no difficult task if a man
cultivates likewise the habit of hoping for nothing. By striving for
fifteen years to compass this end and by spending much trouble over the
same I at last succeeded. Urged on by this humour I sometimes go forth in
rags, sometimes finely dressed, sometimes silent, sometimes talkative,
sometimes joyful, sometimes sad; and on this account my two-fold mood
shows everything double. In my youth I rarely spent any care in keeping my
hair in order, because of my inclination for other pursuits more to my
taste. My gait is irregular. I move now quickly, now slowly. When I am at
home I go with my legs naked as far as the ankles. I am slack in duty and
reckless in speech, and specially prone to show irritation over anything
which may disgust or irk me."

The above-written self-description does not display a personality
particularly attractive. Jerome Cardan was one of those men who experience
a morbid gratification in cataloguing all their sinister points of
character, and exaggerating them at the same time; and in this picture, as
in many others scattered about the _De Vita Propria_, the shadows may have
been put in too strongly.

In the foregoing pages reference was made to certain acts of benevolence
done to Cardan by the family of Archinto. It is not impossible that the
promises and persuasions of his young patron Filippo may have had some
weight in inducing Jerome to shift his home once more. Whatever befell he
could hardly make his case worse; but whether Filippo had promised help or
not, he showed himself now a true and valuable friend. There was in Milan
a public lectureship in geometry and astronomy supported by a small
endowment left by a certain Tommaso Plat, and to this post, which happened
opportunely to be vacant, Cardan was appointed by the good offices of
Filippo Archinto. Yet even when he was literally a pauper he seems to have
felt some scruples about accepting this office, but fortunately in this
instance his poverty overcame his pride. The salary was indeed a very
small one,[62] and the lecturer was not suffered to handle the whole of
it, but it was at least liberal enough to banish the dread of starvation,
and his duties, which consisted solely in the preparation and delivery of
his lectures, did not debar him from literary work on his own account.
Wherefore in his leisure time he worked hard at his desk.

Any differences which may have exi