"A little time after this there was a rumour in the town of a house onfire, and I was roused from sleep to hurry to the spot. Then I learnedthat the house belonged to one Altobello Bandarini,[50] a captain of theVenetian levies in the district of Padua. I had no acquaintance with him,in sooth I scarcely knew him by sight. Now it chanced that after the firehe hired a house next door to my own, a step which displeased me somewhat,for such a neighbour was not to my taste; but what was I to do? After thelapse of a few days, when I was in the street, I perceived a young girlwho, as to her face and her raiment, was the exact image of her whom I hadbeheld in my dream. But I said to myself, 'What is this girl to me? If I,poor wretch that I am, take to wife a girl dowered with naught, except acrowd of brothers and sisters, it will be all over with me; forasmuch as Ican hardly keep myself as it is. If I should attempt to carry her off, orto have my will of her by stealth, there will of a surety be sometale-bearers about; and her father, being a fellow-townsman and a soldierto boot, would not sit down lightly under such an injury. In this case, orin that, it is hard to say what course I should follow, for[Pg 36] if thisaffair should come to the issue I most desire, I must needs fly theplace.' From that same hour these thoughts and others akin to thempossessed my brain, which was only too ready to harbour them, and I feltit would be better to die than to live on in such perplexity. ThenceforthI was as one love-possessed, or even burnt up with passion, and Iunderstood what meaning I might gather from the reading of my dream.Moreover I was by this time freed from the chain which had held me backfrom marriage. Thus I, a willing bridegroom, took a willing bride, herkinsfolk questioning us how this thing had been brought about, andoffering us any help which might be of service; which help indeed provedof very substantial benefit.
Monster Girl Quest Cecil's Adventure English.epub
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He was evidently fascinated with the wealth of local legend and storywhich haunted the misty regions he visited. In dealing with demons andfamiliar spirits he cites the authority of Merlin, "whose fame is stillgreat in England," and tells a story of a young woman living in thecountry of Mar.[130] This damsel was of noble family and very fair inperson, but she displayed a great unwillingness to enter the marriagestate. One day it was discovered that she was pregnant, and when theparents went to make inquisition for the seducer, the girl confessed that,both by day and night, a young man of surpassing beauty used to come andlie with her. Who he was and whence he came she knew not. They, thoughthey gave little credit to her words, were informed by her handmaid, somethree days afterwards, that the young man was once more with her;wherefore, having broken open the door, they entered, bearing lights andtorches, and beheld, lying in their daughter's arms, a monster, fearsomeand dreadful beyond human belief. All the neighbours ran quickly to beholdthe grisly sight, and amongst them a good priest, well acquainted withpagan rites. When he had come anear, and had said some verses of theGospel of Saint John, the fiend vanished with a terrible noise, bearingaway the roof of the chamber, and leaving the bed in flames. In threedays' time the girl gave birth to a monstrous child, more hideous thananything heretofore seen in Scotland, wherefore the nurses, to keep offdisgrace from the family, caused it to be burnt on a pile of wood. Thereis another story of a youth living about fourteen miles from Aberdeen, whowas visited every night by a demon lady of wonderful loveliness, though hebolted and locked his chamber-door; but by fasting and praying andkeeping[Pg 116] his thoughts fixed on holy things he rid himself at last of theunclean spirit.[131] He quotes from Boethius the whole story ofMacbeth,[132] and tells how "Duffus rex" languished and wasted under themalefic arts of certain witches who made an image of the king in wax and,by using various incantations, let the same melt slowly away before thefire. The unhappy king came near to die, but, as soon as these nefariouspractices were discovered, the image was destroyed, whereupon the king wasrestored to health.[133]
In the following year (1555) Cardan's daughter Chiara, who seems to havebeen a virtuous and well-conducted girl, was married to Bartolomeo Sacco,a young Milanese gentleman of good family, a match which proved to befortunate. Cardan had now reached that summit of fame against which theshafts of jealousy will always be directed. The literary manners of theage certainly lacked urbanity, and of all living controversialists therewas none more truculent than Julius Cæsar Scaliger, who had begun hiscareer as a man of letters by a fierce assault upon Erasmus with regard tohis Ciceronianus, a leading case amongst the quarrels of authors.Erasmus he had attacked for venturing to throw doubts upon the suitabilityof Cicero's Latin as a vehicle of modern thought; this quarrel was over aquestion of form; and now Scaliger went a step farther, and, albeit heknew little of the subject in hand, published a book of EsotericExercitations to show that the De Subtilitate of Cardan was nothing buta tissue of nonsense.[168] The book[Pg 149] was written with all the heavy-handedbrutality he was accustomed to use, but it did no hurt to Cardan'sreputation, and, irritable as he was by nature, it failed to provoke himto make an immediate rejoinder, a delay which was the cause of one of themost diverting incidents in the whole range of literary warfare. 2ff7e9595c
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