Astrology, supports her wise but needy mother, Astronomy, from the
profits of a profession not generally considered creditable". There is
no doubt that Kepler strongly resented having to depend so much for his
income on such methods which he certainly did not consider creditable.

It was probably Galileo whose praise of the new Tables induced the Grand
Duke of Tuscany to send Kepler a gold chain soon after their
publication, and we may perhaps regard it as a mark of favour from the
Emperor Ferdinand that he permitted Kepler to attach himself to the
great Wallenstein, now Duke of Friedland, and a firm believer in
Astrology. The Duke was a better paymaster than either of the three
successive Emperors. He furnished Kepler with an assistant and a
printing press; and obtained for him the Professorship of Astronomy at
the University of Rostock in Mecklenburg. Apparently, however, the
Emperor could not induce Wallenstein to take over the responsibility of
the 8000 crowns, still owing from the Imperial treasury on account of
the Rudolphine Tables. Kepler made a last attempt to secure payment at
Ratisbon, but his journey thither brought disappointment and fatigue and
left him in such a condition that he rapidly succumbed to an attack of
fever, dying in November, 1630, in his fifty-ninth year. His body was
buried at Ratisbon, but the tombstone was destroyed during the war then
raging. His daughter, Susanna, the wife of Jacob Bartsch, a physician
who had helped Kepler with his Ephemeris, lost her husband soon after
her father's death, and succeeded in obtaining part of Kepler's arrears
of salary by threatening to keep Tycho's manuscripts, but her
stepmother was left almost penniless with five young children. For their
benefit Louis Kepler printed a "Dream of Lunar Astronomy," which first
his father and then his brother-in-law had been preparing for
publication at the time of their respective deaths. It is a curious
mixture of saga and fairy tale with a little science in the way of