to secrecy. No
outsider was present. The records of the Inquisition are jealously
guarded. That he was technically tortured is certain; that he actually
underwent the torment of the rack is doubtful. Much learning has been
expended upon the question, especially in Germany. Several
eminent scholars have held the fact of actual torture to be
indisputable--geometrically certain, one says--and they confirm it by
the hernia from which he afterward suffered, this being a well-known and
frequent consequence.

Other equally learned commentators, however, deny that the last stage
was reached. For there are five stages all laid down in the rules of the
Inquisition, and steadily adhered to in a rigorous examination, at each
stage an opportunity being given for recantation, every utterance,
groan, or sigh being strictly recorded. The recantation so given has to
be confirmed a day or two later, under pain of a precisely similar
ordeal.

The five stages are: (1) The official threat in the court; (2) the
taking to the door of the torture-chamber and renewing the official
threat; (3) the taking inside and showing the instruments; (4)
undressing and binding upon the rack; (5) _territio realis_. Through how
many of these ghastly acts Galileo passed I do not know. I hope and
believe not the last.

There are those who lament that he did not hold out, and accept the
crown of martyrdom thus offered to him. Had he done so we know his
fate--a few years' languishing in the dungeons, and then the flames.
Whatever he ought to have done, he did not hold out--he gave way. At one
stage or another of the dread ordeal he said: "I am in your hands. I
will say whatever you wish." Then was he removed to a cell while his
special form of perjury was drawn up.

The next day, clothed as a penitent, the venerable old man was taken to
the convent of Minerva, where the cardinals and prelates were assembled
for the purpose of passing judgment upon him.

The judgment sentences him: (1) To the abjuration, (2) to formal
imprisonment for life, (3) to recite the seven penitential psalms every
week.

Ten cardinals were present; but, to their honor, be it said, three
refused to sign; and this blasphemous record of intolerance and bigoted
folly goes down the ages with the names of seven cardinals immortalized
upon it. This having been read, he next had to read word for word the
abjuration which had been drawn up for him, and then sign it.

THE ABJURATION OF