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CHAPTER X.
THE LAST TEAKS OF CARDAN AT PAVIA.
Afflicted and ashamed, Cardan returned to Pavia ,where his sensitive mind suffered a daily torture. Infamyhad fallen upon his house. He either was endured un-easily by his associates at Pavia , or he tortured himselfwith the belief that he was no longer honoured. “ Icould not,” he says, “ be retained with credit, or dis-missed without a reason; I could not live safely in myown country, or quit it without risk. I wandered indespair about the town, conversed with people whodespised me, shunned ungratefully my friends; I couldnot devise what to do, I knew not whither to go; I donot know whether I was most wretched or most hated 1 .”Nevertheless he remained at Pavia two more years.
He had bought a house there, near the Church of SantaMaria di Canepanova 3 ; he had, of course, by right of hisposition, been enrolled a member of the Pavian Collegeof Physicians; and before the late catastrophe he had
1 Paralipomenon, Lib. iy. cap. vi.
2 De Vita Propria, cap. xxiv.