"At this season my father, who was at heart a man of piety, was minded to invoke the divine assistance of San Girolamo (commending me to the care of the Saint in his prayers) rather than trust to the working of that familiar spirit which, as he was wont to declare openly, was constantly in attendance upon him. The reason of this change in his treatment of me I never cared to inquire. It was during the time of my recovery from this sickness, that the French celebrated their triumph after defeating the Venetians on the banks of the Adda, which spectacle I was allowed to witness from my window.[16] After this my father freed me of the task of going with him on his rounds. But the anger of Juno was not yet exhausted; for, before I had fully recovered my health, I fell down-stairs (we were then living in the Via dei Maini), with a hammer in my hand, and by this accident I hurt the left side of my forehead, injuring the bone and causing a scar which remains to this day. Before I had recovered from this mishap I was sitting on the threshold of the house when a stone, about as long and as broad as a nut, fell down from the top of a high house next door and wounded my head just where my hair grew very thickly on the left side. "At the beginning of my tenth year my father changed this house, which had proved a very unlucky one for me, for another in the same street, and there I abode for three whole years. But my ill luck still followed me, for my father once more caused me to go about with him as his _famulus_, and would never allow me on any pretext to escape this task. I should hesitate to say that he did this through cruelty; for, taking into consideration what ensued, you may perchance be brought to see that this action of his came to pass rather through the will of Heaven than through any failing of his own. I must add too that my mother and my aunt were fully in agreement with him in his treatment of me. In after times, however, he dealt with me in much milder fashion, for he took to live with him two of his nephews, wherefore my own labour was lessened by the amount of service he exacted from these. Either I did not go out at all, or if we all went out together the task was less irksome. "When I had completed my sixteenth year--up to which time I served my father constantly--we once more changed our house, and dwelt with Alessandro Cardano next door to the bakery of the Bossi. My father had two other nephews, sons of a sister of his, one named Evangelista, a member of the Franciscan Order, and nearly seventy years of age, and the other Otto Cantone, a farmer of the taxes, and very rich. The last-named, before he died, wished to leave me his sole heir; but this my father forbad, saying that Otto's wealth had been ill gotten; wherefore the estate was distributed according to the directions of the surviving brother."[17]