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178 before his Highness, for he had more than one in his head, and to consult him about the steps to be taken.

This journey, however, was not undertaken, as the court soon returned to Florence.

Galileo's deep depression is most evident from a long letter of 13th October addressed to a cardinal of the Barberini family, which was to reach him through Niccolini. Galileo remarks first that he and his friends had foreseen that his "Dialogues" would find opponents, but he had never imagined that the envious malice of some persons would go so far as to persuade the authorities that they were not worthy to see the light. He goes on to say that the summons before the Inquisition at Rome had caused him the deepest grief, for he feared that such a proceeding, usual only in the case of serious delinquents, would turn the fruits of all his studies and labours during many years, which had lent no little repute to his name with the learned all over the world, into aspersions on his fair fame. "This vexes me so much," continues Galileo, "that it makes me curse the time devoted to these studies in which I strove and hoped to deviate somewhat from the beaten track generally pursued by learned men. I not only repent having given the world a portion of my writings, but feel inclined to suppress those still in hand, and to give them to the flames, and thus satisfy the longing desire of my enemies to whom my ideas are so inconvenient." After this desperate cry from his oppressed soul, he expresses his conviction that, burdened with seventy years and many bodily sufferings, increased by constant sleeplessness, he shall not reach the end of this tedious journey—made more arduous by unusual difficulties—alive. Impelled by the instinct of self-preservation common to all men, he ventures to ask the good