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50 seeing nobody without express permission. It was now known that the whole proceedings hinged on the question of the injunction of 1616, which Galileo maintained that he had obeyed in the sense in which he had understood it. In the course of the weeks that dragged on while the preliminaries of the case were in progress, Niccolini succeeded in dissuading Galileo from his expressed intention of defending himself to the last, counselling complete submission as the quickest and safest course.