private affairs, and not to seek too close an acquaintance.[222]

Up to this date, Cardan, when he visited his patients, had either walked
or ridden a mule. In 1562 he began to use a carriage, but this change of
habit brought ill luck with it, for, in this same year, his horses ran
away; he was thrown out of the vehicle, and sustained an injury to one of
the fingers of his right hand, and to the right arm as well.[223] The
finger soon healed, but the damage to the right arm shifted itself over to
the left side, leaving the right arm sound. The foregoing details, taken
chiefly from the _Paralipomena_ (Book III. ch. xii.), are somewhat
significant in respect to the serious trouble which came upon him soon
afterwards.

Though he had now secured a class-room for himself, the malice of his
enemies was not yet abated. Just before the end of his term, certain of
them went to Cardinal Morone and told him that it would be inexpedient to
allow Cardan to retain his Professorship any longer, seeing that scarcely
any pupils went to listen to him. The terms Cardan used in describing this
hostile movement against him,[224] rouse a suspicion that there may have
been some ground for the assertion of his adversaries; but he declares
that, at any rate, he had a good many pupils from the beginning of the
session up to the time of Lent. He gives no clue whereby the date of this
intrigue may be exactly ascertained, but it probably happened near the end
of his sojourn at Bologna, because in his account of it he describes
likewise the cessation of his public teaching, and makes no mention of any
resumption of the same. He declares that he was at last overborne by the
multitude of his foes, and their cunning plots. Under the pretence that,
in seeking Cardan's removal, they were really acting for his benefit, they
succeeded in bringing Cardinal Morone round to their views. Cardan's final
words in dealing with this matter help to fix the date of this episode as
some time in 1570. Speaking of his enemies, he writes: "Nay indeed they
have given me greater leisure for the codification of my books, they have
lengthened my days, they have increased my fame, and, by procuring my
removal from the work which was too laborious for me, they secured for me
the pleasure I now enjoy in the discovery and investigation of divers of
the secrets of Nature. Therefore I constantly tell myself that I do not
hate these men, nor deem them blameworthy, because they wrou