s period are scant and fragmentary, few
events being chronicled except dreams and portents. In giving an account
of one of these manifestations, which happened in September 1563, he
incidentally lets light upon certain changes and vicissitudes in his own
affairs. He was at this time living in an apartment in the house of the
Ranucci, next door to a half-ruined palace of the Ghislieri. One night he
awoke from sleep, and found that the neck-band of his shirt had become
entangled with the cord by which he kept his precious emerald and a
written charm suspended round his neck. He tried to disentangle the knot,
but in vain, so he left the complication as it was, purposing to unravel
it by daylight. He did not fall asleep; but, after lying quiet for a
little, he determined to attempt once more whether he could undo the knot,
when he found that everything was clear, and the stone under his armpit.
"This sign showed me an unhoped-for solution of certain weighty
difficulties, and at the same time proved, as I have often said elsewhere,
that there must have been present something else unperceived by me. For
my affairs were in this condition: my son-in-law at Milan had the
administration of the scant remains of my property, and I received no
rents therefrom for a whole year. My literary work was lying at the
printer's, but it was not printed. Here, at Bologna, I was forced to
lecture without having a fixed hour assigned to me. A crowd of enemies
were intriguing against me. My son Aldo was in prison, and of little
profit to me. But immediately after this portent I learned that my two
chief opponents were either dying or about to retire. The question of the
lecture-room was settled amicably, so that for the next year I was able to
live in quiet. These two matters having come to an issue, I will next
describe what came to pass with regard to the others.

"During the next July (1564), through the help of Francesco Alciati,[219]
the secretary of Pope Pius IV., a man to whom I am indebted for almost
every benefit I have received since 1561, I began to enjoy my own again.
On August 26 I received from the printer my books all printed with the
greatest care, and by reason of the dispatch of this business my income
was greatly increased. The next day my chief opponent resigned his office,
and left vacant a salary of seven hundred gold crowns. The only
manifestation of adverse fortune left to trouble me was the conspiracy of
the doctors again