There is a passage from De Thou's _History of his Own Times_, affixed to all editions of the _De Vita Propria_,[241] in which is given a contemporary sketch of Cardan during his residence at Rome. "His whole life," De Thou writes, "has been as strange as his present manners, and he, in sooth, out of singleness of mind or frankness, has written about himself certain statements, the like of which have never before been heard of a man of letters, and these I do not feel bound to unfold to any one, let him be ever so curious. I, myself, happening to be in Rome a few years before his death, often spoke to him and observed him with astonishment as he took his walks about the city clad in strange garb. When I considered the many writings of this famous man, I could perceive in him nothing to justify his great renown. Wherefore I am all the more inclined to turn to that very acute criticism of Julius Caesar Scaliger, who exercised his extraordinary genius in making a special examination of the treatise _De Subtilitate Rerum_. He, having carefully noted everywhere the unequal powers of this writer, decided that he was one who, in certain subjects, knew more than a man could know, while in others he seemed more simple than a child. In the science of Arithmetic he worked hard and made many discoveries; but he was subject to strange and excessive aberration of mind, and was guilty of the most impudent blasphemy, in that he was minded to subject to the artificial laws of the stars the Ruler of the stars Himself, for this thing he did in the horoscope of our Saviour which he drew." Another witness of his life in Rome is Francois d'Amboise, a young French nobleman, who was engaged on his book _De Symbolis Heroicis_. He says that he saw Cardan, who was living in a spacious house, on the walls of which, in place of elegant paintings or vari-coloured tapestries, were written the words, "_Tempus mea possessio_."