towards
the prisoner. Cardan himself stood up to defend his son; but with a full
confession staring him in the face, he was sorely puzzled to fix upon a
line of defence. This he perceived must of necessity be largely
rhetorical; and, after he had grasped the entire situation, he set to work
to convince the Court on two main points, first, that Gian Battista was a
youth of simple guileless character; and, second, there was no proof that
Brandonia had died of poison. A physician of good repute, Vincenzo
Dinaldo, swore that she had died of fever (_lipyria_), and not from the
effect of poison; and five others, men of the highest character, declared
that she bore no signs of poison, either externally or internally. Her
tongue and extremities and her body were not blackened, nor was the
stomach swollen, nor did the hair and nails show any signs of falling,
nor were the tissues eaten away. In the opening of his defence Cardan
attempted to discredit the character of Brandonia. He showed how great
were the injuries and provocations which Gian Battista had received from
her, and that she was a dissolute wanton; her father himself, when under
examination, having refused to say that she was a virgin when she left his
house to be married. He claimed justification for the husband who should
slay his wife convicted of adultery; and here, in this case, Brandonia was
convicted by her own confession. He maintained that, if homicide is to be
committed at all, poison is preferable to the knife, and then he went on
to weave a web of ineffectual casuistry in support of his view, which
moved the Court to pity and contempt. He cited the _Lex Cornelia_, which
doomed the common people to the arena, and the patricians to exile, and
claimed the penalty last-named as the one fitting to the present
case.[193] Then he proceeded to show that the woman had really died from
natural causes; for, even granting that she had swallowed arsenic in the
cake, she had vomited at once, and the poison would have no time to do its
work; moreover there was no proof that Gian Battista had given specific
directions to anybody to mix poison with the ingredients of the cake. The
most he had done was to utter some vague words thereanent to his servant,
who forthwith took the matter into his own hands.[194] If Gian Battista
had known, if he had merely been suspicious that the cake was poisoned,
would he have let a crumb of it pass his lips; and if any large quantity
of poi