GALILEO GALILEI. 25 



widely divergent from our own, perhaps this 

 wretched drama was not acted in vain. 



It has been said that Galileo exclaimed as he 

 rose from his feet, " E pur si muove" "It moves, 

 for all that," but this would have been well nigh 

 an impossibility, in the midst of men who would 

 instantly have taken him to a dungeon, and the 

 story is no longer believed. 



On July 9, poor Galileo was allowed to leave 

 Kome for Siena, where he stayed five months in 

 the house of the archbishop, and then became a 

 prisoner in his own house at Arcetri, with strict 

 injunctions that he was "not to entertain friends, 

 nor to allow the assemblage of many at a time." 



He wrote sadly to Maria Celeste, "My name is 

 erased from the book of the living." Tender 

 words came back, saying that it seemed " a thou- 

 sand years " since she had seen him, and that she 

 would recite the seven penitential psalms for him, 

 "to save you the trouble of remembering it." 



In less than a year, sweet Maria Celeste had 

 said the last psalms for him. She died April 1, 

 1634, at thirty-three years of age, leaving Galileo 

 heart-broken; "a woman," he said, "of exquisite 

 mind, singular goodness, and most tenderly at- 

 tached to me." 



He went to work on another book, but he said, 

 pathetically, " I hear her constantly calling me ! " 

 Beautiful spirit, that will forever shed a halo 

 around the name of Galileo Galilei ! 



In the summer of 1636, he completed his " Dia- 



