Cardan was by this time completely possessed by the belief in his attendant genius, and the flash of memory which recalled the purchase of some book or other in his youth, suggested likewise the attribution of certain mystic powers to this guardian genius, and conjured up some fanciful explanation as to the way these powers had been exercised upon himself; he, the person most closely concerned, being entirely unconscious of their operation at the time when they first affected him. This recorded belief in a gift of tongues is one of the most convincing bits of evidence to be gleaned from Cardan's writings of the insanity which undoubtedly afflicted him, at least periodically, at this crisis of his life. FOOTNOTES: [221] He mentions this matter briefly in the _De Vita Propria_: "Bis arsisset lectus, praedixi me non permansurum Bononiae, et prima vice restiti, secunda non potui."--ch. xli. p. 151. A fuller account of it is in _Opera_, tom. x. p. 464. [222] _Opera_, tom. x. p. 464. [223] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xxx. p. 80. He seems to have had many untoward experiences in driving. He tells of another mishap (_Opera_, tom. i. p. 472) in June 1570; how a fellow, some tipstaff of the courts, jumped into his carriage and frightened the mares Cardan was driving, jeering at them likewise because they were rather bare of flesh. [224] "Demum sub conductionis fine, voces sparserunt, et maxime apud Moronum Cardinalem, me exiguo auditorio profiteri, quod quanquam non omnino verum esset, quinimo ab initio Academiae multos, et usque ad dies jejunii haberem auditores."--_De Vita Propria_, ch. xvii. p. 56. [225] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xvii. p. 57. [226] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xliii. p. 163. [227] "Alii multis diebus abstinent cibo, alii igne uruntur, ac ferro secantur, nullum doloris vestigium preferentes; multi sunt vocem e pectore mittentes, qui olim engastrimuthi dicebantur; hoc autem maxime eis contingit cum orgia quaedam exercent, atque circumferuntur in orbem. Quae tria ut verissima sunt et naturali ratione mira tamen constant, cujus superius mentionem fecimus, ita illud confictum nasci pueros e mulieribus absque concubitu."--_De Subtilitate_, p. 353. [228] Ranke, _History of the Popes_, vol. i. p. 246. [229] Mr. Stephen Paget in his life of Ambroise Pare, the great contemporary French surgeon, gives an interesting account of Pare's beliefs on the divine cause of the plague, p. 269. [230] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xxii. p. 63. [231] "Multa de daemonibus narrabat, quae quam vera essent nescio."--_De Utilitate_, p. 348. [232] _De Varietate_, p. 351. [233] _Ibid.,_ p. 658. [234] In his counsel to his children, he writes: "Do not believe that you hear demons speak to you, or that you behold the dead. Seek not to learn the truth of these things, for they are amongst the things which are hidden from us."