son, so he departed at once to
take up his duties.

At Bologna Cardan went first to live in a hired house in the Via Gombru.
Aldo was nominally a member of his household; but his presence must have
been a plague rather than a comfort to his father, and he took with him
likewise his orphan grandson, the son of Gian Battista and Brandonia, whom
he destined to make his heir on account of Aldo's ill conduct.[212] This
young man seems to have been a hopeless scoundrel from the first. The
ratio in which fathers apportion their affection amongst their offspring
is a very capricious one, and Cardan may have been fully as wide of the
mark in chiding his younger as he was in lauding the talents and virtues
of his elder son. But it is certain that on several occasions the
authorities shared Cardan's view of Aldo's ill behaviour. More than once
he alludes to the young reprobate's shameful conduct, and the intolerable
annoyance caused by the same. Many of the ancient rights of parents over
their children, which might to-day be deemed excessive, were still
operative in the cities of Italy, and Cardan readily invoked the help of
them in trying to work reformation of a sort upon Aldo, whom he caused to
be imprisoned more than once, and finally to be banished.[213] The
numerous hitches which delayed his final call to Bologna were probably due
to the fact that a certain party amongst the teachers there were opposed
to his appointment, and things did not run too smoothly after he had taken
up his residence in his new home. It was not in Cardan's nature, however
much he may have been cowed and broken down by misfortune, to mix with men
inimical to himself without letting them have a taste of his quality. He
records one skirmish which he had with Fracantiano, the Professor of the
Practice of Medicine, a skirmish which, in its details, resembles so
closely his encounter with Branda Porro, at Pavia, some time before, that
it suggests a doubt whether it ever had a separate existence, and was not
simply a variant of the Branda legend. "It happened that he (Fracantiano)
was giving an account of the passage of the gall into the stomach, and was
speaking in Greek before the whole Academy (he was making the while an
anatomical dissection), when I cried out, 'There is an "[Greek: ou]"
wanting in that sentence.' And as he delayed making any correction of his
error, and I kept on repeating my remark in a low voice, the students
cried out, 'Let the _Co