Note 1 — Chapter I

Bayle is unwilling to admit Cardan's illegitimate birth. In De Consolatione, Opera, tom. i. p. 619 (Lyons, 1663), Cardan writes in reference to the action of the Milanese College of Physicians: "Medicorum collegium, suspitione obortâ, quòd (tam malè à patre tractatus) spurius essem, repellebat." Bayle apparently had not read the De Consolatione, as he quotes the sentence as the work of a modern writer, and affirms that the word "suspitio" would not have been used had the fact been notorious. But in the Dialogus de Morte, Opera, tom. i. p. 676, Cardan declares that his father openly spoke of him as a bastard.