THE TRIAL OF GALILEO. 395 



Urban would listen to nothing ; fearing lest he should be deceived, 

 as he believed he had been before, he would permit no delay. He 

 would not even believe the testimony of three physicians who attested 

 the reality of Galileo's malady ; he sent the inquisitor in person to 

 him, with orders to arrest and bring him in irons to Rome, if he was 

 found to be in a condition to bear the journey. Poor Galileo had taken 

 to his bed, and, as was said by one of his friends, "he was more in 

 danger of going to the other world than to Rome." He was not in a 

 condition to be removed until January, 1633. The good offices of the 

 Grand-duke of Tuscany attended him to the presence of his judges, 

 and there the friendship of Niccolini accompanied him weak succors 

 these in the face of such powerful adversaries. At first the embas- 

 sador's palace was appointed as his place of confinement, and he was 

 commanded not to leave it ; he went out only in order to submit to 

 the interrogatories proposed to him by the Holy Office. 



On the 12th of April he was interrogated for the first time. To 

 begin with, he was asked if he remembered what took place in 1616, 

 when he had to appear before Cardinal Bellarmin and the commissary- 

 general of the Holy Office. Galileo admitted having heard it declared 

 on that day that the system of Copernicus could not be maintained 

 or defended, as being contrary to the Holy Scriptures. " It may be," 

 he added, "that at the same time I myself was forbidden to maintain 

 or defend that opinion, but I do not recollect, it is now so long ago." 

 Whatever may be the interest now taken in a case so bound up with 

 the question of the freedom of thought, it is not easy to believe with 

 Berti that Galileo replied to this first interrogatory with entirely good 

 faith. When a prohibition is issued in terms so formal as those we 

 have given, upon so definite a point, neither the form nor the sub- 

 stance is ever forgotten. Ambiguity was out of the question after 

 Bellarmin's warning, and still more after the solemn injunction of the 

 commissary-general. Domenico Berti is in error with regard to the 

 psychological conditions of memory where he says that it must have 

 been easier for Galileo to recollect the conciliatory words of Cardinal 

 Bellarmin than the threats of the commissary-general. On the con- 

 trary, what strikes one most under such circumstances, what impresses 

 itself deepest in the memory, is the threats. How could any one for- 

 get words so simple, so clear, so menacing, as these : " You are for- 

 bidden to maintain this opinion, to teach or to defend it, whether by 

 writing or by word of mouth, or in any other manner whatsoever, else 

 the Holy Office will take information against you ! " These last words 

 in particular must have buried themselves like an arrow in the memory 

 of Galileo, nevermore to come out. He knew all too well what he 

 had to fear from the Inquisition ever to forget on what conditions that 

 tribunal agreed to take no further cognizance of him. The silence he 

 kept in public for sixteen years upon the forbidden subject, and even 

 the care he took in his " Dialogues " to give to his thoughts an in- 



