ut to the Porta Tonsa, clad in the smart
silk gown which his father had recently given him, and as he was passing a
butcher's shop, a certain pig, one of a drove which was there, rose up out
of the mud and attacked the young physician and befouled his gown. The
butcher and his men, to whom the thing seemed portentous, drove off the
hog with staves, but this they could only do after the beast had wearied
itself, and after Gian Battista had gone away. Again, at the beginning of
February following, while Cardan was in residence as a Professor at Pavia,
he chanced to look at the palm of his hand, and there, at the root of the
third finger of the right hand, he beheld a mark like a bloody sword. That
same evening a messenger arrived from Milan with the news of his son's
arrest, and a letter from his son-in-law, begging him to come at once. The
mark on his hand grew and grew for fifty-three days, gradually mounting up
the finger, until the last fatal day, when it extended to the tip of the
finger, and shone bright like fiery blood. The morning after Gian
Battista's execution the mark had almost vanished, and in a day or two no
sign of it remained.

Cardan hurried to Milan to hear from Bartolomeo Sacco, his son-in-law, the
full extent of the calamity. Probably there were few people in the city
who did not regard Gian Battista as a worthless fellow, whose death would
be a gain to the State and a very light loss to his immediate friends, but
Cardan was not of this mind. He turned his back upon his professional
engagements at Pavia, and threw himself, heart and soul, into the fight
for his son's life. He could not make up his mind as to Gian Battista's
recent conduct; if he ate of the cake, he surely could not have put in
poison himself, or directed others to do so; if, on the other hand, he had
poisoned the cake, Cardan feared greatly that, in the simplicity of his
nature, he would assuredly let his accusers know what he had done. And his
mind was greatly upset by the prodigies of which he had recently had
experience. For some reason or other he did not visit the accused in
prison, or give him any advice as to what course he should follow, a piece
of neglect which he cites as a reproach against himself afterwards; but
certain associates of Gian Battista, and his fellow-captives as well,
urged him to assert his innocence, a course which Cardan recognized as the
only safe one. At the first examination the accused followed this couns