us of a strange movement; and, having put his hand to his
breast, found that his heart was palpitating violently because he had been
lying on his left side. Then he remembered that a similar physical trouble
had accompanied the first trembling of the bed, and admits that this
manifestation may be referred to a natural cause, _i.e._ the palpitation.
He tells also how he found amongst his father's papers a record of a cure
of the gout by a prayer offered to the Virgin at eight in the morning on
the first of April, and how he duly put up the prayer and was cured of the
gout, but he adds: "Sed in hoc, auxiliis etiam artis usus sum."[272] Again
with regard to the episode of the ignition of his bed twice in the same
night, without visible cause, he says that this portent may have come
about by some supernatural working; but that, on the other hand, it may
have been the result of mere chance. He tells another story of an
experience which befell him when he was in Belgium.[273] He was aroused
early in the morning by the noise made outside his door by a dog catching
fleas. Having got out of bed to see to this, he heard the sound as of a
key being softly put into the lock. He told this fact to the servants, who
at once took up the tale, and persuaded themselves that they had heard
many noises of the same kind, and others vastly more wonderful; in short,
the whole house was swarming with apparitions. The next night the noise
was repeated, and a second observation laid bare the real cause thereof.
The scratching of the dog had caused the bolt to fall into the socket, and
this produced the noise which had disquieted him. He writes in conclusion:
"Thus many events which seem to defy all explanation have really come to
pass by accident, or in the course of nature. Out of such manifestations
as these the unlettered, the superstitious, the timorous, and the
over-hasty make for themselves miracles."[274] Again, after telling a
strange story of a boy who beheld the image of a thief in the neck of a
phial, and of some incantations of Josephus Niger, he concludes:
"Nevertheless I am of opinion that all these things were fables, and that
no one could have had any real knowledge thereof, seeing that they were
nothing else than vain triflings."[275]

In a nature so complex and many-sided as Cardan's, strange resemblances
may be sought for and discovered, and it certainly is an unexpected
revelation to find a mental attitude common to Cardan, a m