LITTLE pathy and her death seemed almost the crowning 

 JOURNEYS calamity jt & 



But once back to his village home at Arcetri, Galileo 

 again went to 'work with his telescope, mapping the 

 heavens. A goodly degree of health and animation 

 came back to him, but his eyesight, so long misused, 

 now failed him and he became blind. Thus Milton 

 found him in 1638. Castelli, his lifelong friend, wrote to 

 another, " The noblest eye that God ever made is dark- 

 ened: the eye so privileged that it may in truth be 

 said to have seen more wonderful things and made 

 others to see more wonderful things, than were ever 

 seen before." But blindness could not subdue him any 

 more than it could John Milton. He had others look 

 through the telescope and tell him what they saw and 

 then he would foretell what they would see next. 

 The policy of the Pope was that Galileo should not be 

 disturbed so long as he kept to his village home and 

 taught merely the few scholars or "servants," as they 

 called themselves, who came to him, but these were 

 to be taught mathematics and not astronomy. That he 

 was even at the last under suspicion is shown that 

 concealed in the mattress of the bed upon which he 

 died were records of his latest discoveries concerning 

 the revolution of the planets. Legal opposition was 

 made as to his right to make a will, the claim being 

 that he was a prisoner of the Inquisition at his death. 

 For the same reason his body 'was not allowed to be 

 buried in consecrated ground. The Pope overruled the 

 objection and he was buried in an obscure corner of 

 62 



