very good pay. He worked by the conventional rules of astrology, and was
quite prepared to take fees for so doing, although he had very little
faith in them, preferring his own fanciful ideas.

In 1604 the constellation of Cassiopeia was once more temporarily
enriched by the appearance of a new star, said by some to be brighter
than Tycho's nova, and by others to be twice as bright as Jupiter.
Kepler at once wrote a short account of it, from which may be gathered
some idea of his attitude towards astrology. Contrasting the two novae,
he says: "Yonder one chose for its appearance a time no way remarkable,
and came into the world quite unexpectedly, like an enemy storming a
town and breaking into the market-place before the citizens are aware of
his approach; but ours has come exactly in the year of which astrologers
have written so much about the fiery trigon that happens in it; just in
the month in which (according to Cyprian), Mars comes up to a very
perfect conjunction with the other two superior planets; just in the day
when Mars has joined Jupiter, and just in the region where this
conjunction has taken place. Therefore the apparition of this star is
not like a secret hostile irruption, as was that one of 1572, but the
spectacle of a public triumph, or the entry of a mighty potentate; when
the couriers ride in some time before to prepare his lodgings, and the
crowd of young urchins begin to think the time over long to wait, then
roll in, one after another, the ammunition and money, and baggage
waggons, and presently the trampling of horse and the rush of people
from every side to the streets and windows; and when the crowd have
gazed with their jaws all agape at the troops of knights; then at last
the trumpeters and archers and lackeys so distinguish the person of the
monarch, that there is no occasion to point him out, but every one cries
of his own accord--'Here we have him'. What it may portend is hard to
determine, and this much only is certain, that it comes to tell mankind