ear a certain young man, named
Virgilius, who had been present at the gathering aforesaid, died, and he
sets down this event as a fulfilment of his prophecy.

But in the same chapter he lets the reader into the secret of his system
of prophecy, and displays it as simply an affair of common-sense, one
recommended by Aristotle as the only trustworthy method of divining future
events. Cardan writes: "I used to inquire what might be the exact nature
of the business in hand, and began by making myself acquainted with the
character of the locality, the ways of the people, and the quality of the
chief actors. I unfolded a vast number of historical instances, leading
events and secret transactions as well, and then, when I had confirmed the
facts set forth by my method of art, I gave my judgment thereupon."[244]

In his latter years Cardan must have been in easy circumstances. The
pension from the Pope--no mention is made of its amount--and the fees he
received from his patients allowed him to keep a carriage; and writing in
his seventy-fifth year, he says that no fees would tempt him to join any
consultation unless he should be well assured what sort of men he was
expected to meet.[245]

In the _Norma Vitae Consarcinata_[246] he relates how in April 1576 there
were two inmates of the Xenodochium at Rome, Troilus and Dominicus. It
seemed that Troilus exercised some strange and malefic influence over his
companion, who was taken with fever. He got well of this, but only to fall
into a dropsy, which despatched him in a week. Shortly before his death,
at the seventh hour, he cried out to two Spaniards who were standing by
the bed that he had suffered such great torture from the working of
Troilus, and that he was dying therefrom. "Therefore," he cried, "in your
presence I summon him with my dying words to appear before God's tribunal,
that he may give an account of all the evil he has wrought against me." On
the following day there came a messenger from Corneto, a few miles from
Rome, saying that Troilus, who was sojourning there, had fallen sick. The
physician inquired at what hour, and the messenger said it was at seven
o'clock, a day or two ago. He lay ill some days, an unfavourable case, but
not a desperate one, and one night shortly afterwards at seven o'clock,
the top of the mosquito curtains fell, and he died at exactly the same
hour as Dominicus.

He tells another long story of an adventure which befell him in May 1576.