Two years later, in August, 1817, he again attacked Count Pradel on the subject,[626] and was assured that they were not in the cabinet of the royal palace; he might have a search made among the archives in the Louvre, they might have been put aside there.[627] Marini suspected that the papers had been purloined, and asked the minister of police, Count Decazes, to help him in his search. He, however, referred him to the Minister Of the Interior,[628] that is, to the place where he had begun his inquiries three years before. Afterwards he applied to the president of the ministry, the Duke of Richelieu, and to the influential M. de Lainé, but with no more success than before.
In 1820 Venturi applied to Delambre, Secretary of the Academy of Sciences, with the request to get for him, if possible, extracts from and copies of the Acts of the trial, as he was urgently in want of them for the second volume of his “Memorie e lettere inedite fuora o disperse di Galileo Galilei.” Delambre eagerly took up the question. Some light is thrown on the steps he took by the following note to Barbier of 27th June, only published a few months ago:—
“Le secretaire perpétuel de l’Académie pour les Sciences Mathématiques est venu pour avoir l’honneur de converser avec M. Barbier, sur un article intéressant de biographie astronomique, le procés de Galilée et les pièces originales dont M. Barbier a été longtemps dêpositaire. Il desire cette conversation pour lui-même et pour M. Venturi, etc., Delambre.”[629]
Three days later Delambre wrote to Venturi that the original Acts certainly had been at Paris some years ago, but had disappeared, and it was not now known whether they were still there or had been taken away. He told him that during the Empire the publication and translation of the documents had been projected, but political events had prevented it from being carried out; the extracts, however, then made, and the French translation which had been begun, were in existence. These, which M. Barbier had placed at Delambre’s disposal, he sent to Venturi. Delambre expressed his great regret that the material which he could obtain was not complete; but he consoled himself with the opinion that by the publication of the documents in Riccioli’s “Almagestum novum,” 1651, and in the first volume of Venturi’s work, nothing essential would be wanting; and “that unfortunate business, which would be ridiculous if it were not so repulsive, is now as widely known as can be desired.” Delambre, as it seems, was only concerned with the clearing up of the torture question; and as the fragments which had come to his knowledge contained no evidence of torture, and as he might have been informed by Barbier that there was no trace of it in any of the papers, he wrote as above in calm conviction to Venturi.
Eight years afterwards Count Darü, who was intending to bring out his work on astronomy, made inquiries of Barbier about the existence of the Acts of Galileo’s trial. The information he received must have been wholly unsatisfactory, as appears from the following letter from the Count to Barbier of 16th October, 1828:—
“J’ai reçu Monsieur ... les deux lettres que vous m’avez fait l’honneur de m’écrire. J’ai trouvé, joint à la seconde, le billet de M. l’abbé Denina[630] qui prouve que la traduction du procès de Galilée a existé au moins en partie. Du reste, nous en avions déjà la preuve par l’extrait de M. Delambre. Je suis persuadé que le procès existe quelque part à Paris, et ce me semble, il doit se trouver dans quelque bibliothèque du roi, peut être même aux Archives de la liste civile. J’en parlerai a M. le baron de la Bouillerie.
Recevez, etc.,
Darü.”[631]
But Darü’s further inquiries seem to have been unsuccessful; anyhow, the long-sought-for volume remained concealed for seventeen years longer. In 1845 Gregory XVI. requested Pelegrino Rossi, French ambassador at Rome, who was devoted to the papacy, to use his influence to get the Acts restored, if they should be discovered at Paris. This shows that it was disbelieved at Rome that they could not be found. At first Rossi’s urgent mediation only obtained the assurance from Louis Philippe that the Pope’s cherished wish should be fulfilled, provided that the papers should be found, but on the express condition that they should be published entire at Rome. And as the curia, of course, promised to comply, the MS. which had been mysteriously concealed for thirty-one years was “found” and restored.
In 1848-9, when the Papal See was attacked by the revolutionary spirit which pervaded Europe, the fugitive Pope, Pius IX., confided the hardly-won documents to the prefect of the Secret Archives, Marino Marini. He not only took good care of them, but took the opportunity of fulfilling the obligation to the French Government incurred on their restoration. On 12th April, 1850, the Pope returned from Gaeta to his capital under the protection of French bayonets, and his thoughts must soon have recurred to these documents, for on 8th May of the same year he presented them to the Vatican Library. In the same year, also, Marini’s work, “Galileo Galilei e l’Inquizione,” appeared at Rome, intended to be the fulfilment of the French conditions.