ronicler. In cases where the record of an event of his early life given
in the _De Vita Propria_ differs from an account of the same in some
contemporary writing, the testimony of the _De Vita Propria_ may justly be
put aside; but in this instance he was writing of something which could
only have happened a few days past, and the balance of probability is that
he was right and De Thou wrong. Bayle notices this discrepancy, and in
the same paragraph taxes De Thou with a mistake of which he is innocent.
He states that De Thou placed the date of Cardan's death in 1575, whereas
the excerpt cited above runs: "Thuanus ad annum MDLXXVI., p. 136, lib.
lxii. tom. 4. Romae magni nominis sive Mathematicus, sive Medicus
Hieronymus Cardanus Mediol. natus hoc anno itidem obiit."

No mention is made of the disease to which Cardan finally succumbed. Had
his frame not been of the strongest and most wiry, it must have gone to
pieces long before through the havoc wrought by the severe and continuous
series of ailments with which it was afflicted; so it seems permissible to
assume that he died of natural decay. His body was interred in the church
of Sant Andrea at Rome, and was subsequently transferred to Milan to be
deposited finally under the stone which covered the bones of his father in
the church of San Marco. This tomb, which Jerome had erected after Fazio's
death, bore the following inscription:

FACIO CARDANO

1.C.

Mors fuit id quod vixi: vitam mors dedit ipsa,
Mens aeterna manet, gloria tuta quies.

Obiit anno MDXXIV. IV. Kalend. Sept. anno AEtatis LXXX.
Hieronymus Cardanus Medicus Parenti posterisque V.P.[247]

FOOTNOTES:

[239] "Qua causa permotus sim ad scribendum, superius intellexisse te
existimo, quippe somnio monitus, inde bis, terque, ac quater, ac pluries,
ut alias testatus sum; sed et desiderio perpetuandi nominis. Bis autem
magnam copiam ac numerum eorum perdidi; primum circa XXXVII annum, cum
circiter IX. libros exussi, quod vanos ac nullius utilitatis futuros esse
intelligerem; anno autem MDLXXIII alios CXX libros, cum jam calamitas illa
cessasset cremavi."--_De Vita Propria_, ch. xlv. pp. 174, 175.

[240] _Opera_, tom. i. p. 122.

[241] _De Vita Propria_, p. 232.

[242] _Opera_, tom. i. p. 639. In the _De Varietate_ he says that natural
causes may in most cases be found for seeming marvels. "Ecce auditur
strepitus in domo, potest esse mus, fel