have said such a thing); 'at least you will remain with him as long as he lives.' I promised that I would, and a little later the boy tried to rise, crying out the while. They held him down, and cast all the blame upon me. What more is there to say? If there had been found any trace of that drug _Diarob: cum Turbit_: (which in sooth was not safe) it would have been all over with me, since Borromeo all his life would either have launched against me complaints grave enough to make all men shun me, or another Canidia, more fatal than African serpents, would have breathed poison upon me."[71] In this same year, 1536, Lucia brought forth another child, a daughter, and it was about this time that Cardan first attracted the attention of Alfonso d'Avalos, the Governor of Milan, and an intimacy began which, albeit fruitless at first, was destined to be of no slight service to Jerome at the crisis of his fortunes.[72] In the following year, in 1537, he made a beginning of two of his books, which were subsequently found worthy of being finished, and which may still be read with a certain interest: the treatises _De Sapientia_ and _De Consolatione_. Of the last-named, he remarks that it pleased no one, forasmuch as it appealed not to those who were happy, and the wretched rejected it as entirely inadequate to give them solace in their evil case. In this year he made another attempt to gain admission to the College at Milan, and was again rejected; the issue of the _De Malo Medendi_ was too recent, and it needed other and more potent influences than those exercised by mere merit, to appease the fury of his rivals and to procure him due status. But it would appear that, in 1536 or 1537, he negotiated with the College to obtain a quasi-recognition on conditions which he afterwards describes as disgraceful to himself, and that this was granted to him.[73]