Three months before his death, with the certainty of its approach, he sent for Torricelli, and spent long hours in unreserved discourse with him. Not a word of torture!
Finally, in his last letter, just three weeks before his death, to Beccherini, he bewails his endurances and his troubles in a spirit that could not and did not fail to unseal his lips for everything he had to say in the spirit of complaint; but here, too, not a word of torture!
The majority of the French feuilletonists on the Ponsard drama manifest disappointment at not finding any torture, and straightway seek solace in such reflections as, "Ainsi, Galilée ne fut point mis à la torture; on en a aujourd'hui la pleine certitude."! [Footnote 147]
[Footnote 147: "Thus, then, Galileo was not put to the torture. Of that we now have the fullest certainty.">[
But the feuilletonist wants to know if the persecutions, bitterness, and vexation of every kind to which Galileo was subjected were not the equivalent of physical torture?
And what, then, does he take to be the equivalent of the irony, sarcasm, ingratitude, and insult gratuitously heaped upon Urban, the kind friend and liberal benefactor of Galileo?
No reasonable doubt can now exist as to the fact that it was not Galileo's assertion of the hypothesis of the earth's rotation that brought him into trouble. It was his intemperance of language, impatience of wise counsel, disregard of sacred obligations, violation of solemn promises, and above all, his insane perversity in dragging the scriptural element into the controversy. Of the scores of distinguished adherents, disciples, advocates, and professors of the heliocentric doctrine, Galileo alone gave annoyance and created difficulty.
To the extent of examining and discussing the question scientifically, the freedom at Rome was perfect. But when the point was reached when it was gratuitously thrust into collision with Scripture, a degree of demonstration was needed that could not be produced.
After The Trial.