ies of the Holy Office, that the terms, "Il rigoroso
esame," during which Galileo is reported to have answered like a good
Christian, officially announce the application of the torture.

Then occurred, perhaps scarcely an hour afterward, that remarkable
episode in this man's history. As he arose from the ground on which, all
kneeling, he had pronounced his abjuration, he gave a significant stamp,
and whispered to a friend, "_E pur si muove!_" "Yet it does move"--ay,
and in spite of Inquisitions, has gone round--nay, the whole world of
thought itself has moved, and having received an impulse from such
minds, will revolve for ages in a glorious cycle for mankind! But the
most touching incident of Galileo's story is yet to come.

After several years of confinement at Arcetri, the great astronomer was
permitted to retire to Florence, upon the conditions that he should
neither quit his house, nor receive the visits of his friends. They
removed him from a prison, to make a prison of his home. Alas! it was
even worse than this.

Much as the greatest minds love fame, and struggle to obtain it, the
proudest triumphs of genius and of science, the applause of the world
itself, ever loud and obtrusive, is not to be compared to the low and
gentle murmurs of pleasure and of pride from those we love. There was
one being from whom Galileo had been accustomed to hear those
consolations--his child his gentle Maria Galilei. He had been otherwise
a solitary indeed, and now more than ever so, when he was cut off from
the communion of the greatest minds. To his lovely girl, his daughter,
his heart clung with more than fondness. No wife of Pliny, perhaps, ever
wafted to her husband with sweeter devotion the echoes of the applauding
world without, greeting him she loved, than she did--his Maria Galilei.
As he returned from prison, the way seemed tedious, the fleetest
traveling all too slow, till he should once more fold her to his heart;
and she, too, she anticipated meeting her father with a pleasure greater
than ever before enjoyed, since he had now become a victim, sainted in
her eyes, by the persecution he had suffered.

Short, indeed, was this happiness, if enjoyed at all. Within the month,
she died, and the home of Galileo was more than a prison--it was a
desolate altar, on which the last and most precious of his household
gods was shivered. And he died too, a few years afterward, that good old
man!

But he had yielded--he was no ma