Page:Galileo Galilei and the Roman Curia (IA cu31924012301754).pdf/343

 not permitted to stay till the close. At the beginning of November he had to return to Rome, leaving Galileo, Torricelli, and Viviani eagerly occupied with the completion of the "Dialoghi delle Nuove Scienze."

On 5th November Galileo was attacked by an insidious hectic fever, which slowly but surely brought him to the grave. Violent pains in his limbs threw him on a sick bed, from which he did not rise again. In spite of all these sufferings, which were augmented by constant palpitation of the heart and almost entire sleeplessness, his active mind scarcely rested for a moment, and he spent the long hours of perpetual darkness in constant scientific conversation and discussions with Torricelli and Viviani, who noted down the last utterances of the dying man with pious care. As they chiefly related to the "Dialoghi delle Nuove Scienze," they are to be found in the two supplementary Dialogues added to that work.

On 8th January, 1642, the year of Newton's birth, having received the last sacraments and the benediction of Urban VIII., Galileo breathed his last, at the age of nearly seventy-eight years. His son Vincenzo, his daughter-in-law Sestilia Bocchineri, his pupils Torricelli and Viviani, and the parish priest, were around his bed. And when Vincenzo closed his father's sightless eyes for their last long sleep, they gave not a thought at Rome to the severe loss sustained by science by Galileo's death, but only prepared in hot haste to guard the interests of the Church, and as far as it lay in their power, to persecute the Cæsar of science even beyond the grave. The aim was now, as far as possible,