tanding,
wealthy, for the most part full of years, well instructed, richly clad and
cultivated in their bearing, well versed in speaking, supported by crowds
of friends and kinsfolk, raised by popular approval to high position, and,
what was more powerful than all else, skilled in every art of cunning and
deceit?"

Cardan had indeed prepared a bitter pill for his foes, but the draught
they compelled him to swallow was hardly more palatable. The publication
of the book naturally increased the difficulties of his position, and in
this respect tended to make his final triumph all the more noteworthy.

It was in 1536 that Cardan made his first essay as an author.[68] The next
three years of his life at Milan were remarkable as years of preparation
and accumulation, rather than as years of achievement. He had struck his
first blow as a reformer, and, as is often the lot of reformers, his sword
had broken in his hand, and there now rested upon him the sense of failure
as a superadded torment. Yet now and again a gleam of consolation would
disperse the gloom, and advise him that the world was beginning to
recognize his existence, and in a way his merits. In this same year he
received an offer from Pavia of the Professorship of Medicine, but this he
refused because he did not see any prospect of being paid for his
services. His friend Filippo Archinto was loyal still, and zealous in
working for his success, and as he had been recently promoted to high
office in the Imperial service, his good word might be very valuable
indeed. He summoned his _protege_ to join him at Piacenza, whither he had
gone to meet Paul III., hoping to advance Cardan's interests with the
Pope; but though Marshal Brissac, the French king's representative,[69]
joined Archinto in advocating his cause, nothing was done, and Jerome
returned disappointed to Milan.

In these months Cardan, disgusted by the failure of his late attack upon
the fortress of medical authority, turned his back, for a time, upon the
study of medicine, and gave his attention almost entirely to mathematics,
in which his reputation was high enough to attract pupils, and he always
had one or more of them in his house, the most noteworthy of whom was
Ludovico Ferrari of Bologna, who became afterwards a mathematician of
repute, and a teacher both at Milan and Bologna. While he was working at
the _De Malo Medendi_, he began a treatise upon Arithmetic, which he
dedicated to his friend Prior