Thus I had an unpleasant meeting, Niccolini concluded with a shudder, having written down the conversation in full, and I feel the Pope could not have a worse disposition toward our poor Signor Galilei. I believe it is necessary to take this business without violence, and to deal with the ministers and with the Lord Cardinal Barberini rather than with the Pope himself, for when His Holiness gets something into his head, that is the end of the matter, especially if one is opposing, threatening, or defying him, since then he hardens and shows no respect to anyone. The best course is to temporize and try to move him by persistent, skillful, and quiet diplomacy.

Which is what Niccolini had done through the rest of that fall and winter. From Riccardi he received assurances that all would probably be well, but Riccardi gave him a warning too, which Niccolini passed on to his superiors:

However, above all he says, with the usual confidentiality and secrecy, that in the files of the Holy Office they have found something which alone is sufficient to ruin Signor Galilei completely.

This was presumably Segizzi’s record of Bellarmino’s 1616 prohibition, as Riccardi eventually explained to Niccolini. The hidden card had come out of its hole in the Vatican.

But certain spies added to this information that the anonymous denunciation of Il Saggiatore made in 1624 had also been relocated. So Galileo was in trouble on two fronts, only one of them accounted for by Sarpi’s defensive schemes.

Niccolini’s own sources only told him of something mysterious without specifying it, and in a subsequent audience with the pope, he confirmed the suspicion he had expressed to the grand duke and Cioli, that something odd was going on here that they didn’t understand. In this audience, the pope told Niccolini, as the ambassador reported, to warn the grand duke not to let Signor Galilei spread troublesome and dangerous opinions under the pretext of running a certain school for young people, because he had “heard something” (I know not what).

There were forces swirling around Rome, descending on this trial.

The Villa Medici was much the same as it had been eighteen years before: a big blocky white building, surrounded by extensive formal gardens that were full of old Roman statues, slowly melting into smooth marble plinths. The ambassador Francesco Niccolini welcomed Galileo into the place with the greatest of solicitation, in marked contrast to the greetings Galileo had gotten on previous visits. Each time he came to Rome his standing was inexplicably different than it had been the times before. A dreamlike place; and this time a nightmare. But in this nightmare—incongruously, thankfully—there emerged this friendly and generous face.

“I am here to help you in any way I can,” Niccolini said, and Galileo could see in his face that it would be true.

“Where do such good people come from?” Galileo asked Cartophilus that afternoon, as the ancient servant unpacked his bags. Their rooms had east-facing windows this time, and a high ceiling; they were beautiful.

“The Niccolini have always been a force in Florence,” Cartophilus said blandly into the big wardrobe where he was hanging Galileo’s shirts.

Galileo blew air between his lips rudely. “This is no ordinary Niccolini.”

Ordinary or not, he was a generous host and a fine advocate. He arranged meeting after meeting with the crucial cardinals, and joined many of the meetings to ask for the cardinals’ help. He worked around all the edges, and at the center he asked for yet another audience with Urban for himself, to arrange if possible for lenient and swift treatment of the old astronomer, stressing Galileo’s official capacity at the Tuscan Court, and his advanced age.

However, as Niccolini described it in his letter to Cioli in Florence, the pope was unmoved by these appeals.

He replied to me that Signor Galilei will be examined in due course, but there is an argument which no one has ever been able to answer: that is, God is omnipotent and can do anything; and since He is omnipotent, why do we want to bind Him? I said that I was not competent to discuss these subjects, but I had heard Signor Galilei himself say that first, he did not hold the opinion of the earth’s motion as true, and then that since God could make the world in innumerable ways, one could not deny, after all, that He might have made it this way. However, the Pope got upset at that, and told me that one must not impose necessity on the blessed God. Seeing that he was losing his temper, I did not want to continue discussing what I did not understand, and thus displease him to the detriment of Signor Galilei. So I said that, in short, Galileo was here to obey and to retract everything for which he could be blamed in regard to religion; then, in order not to arouse suspicion that I too might offend the Holy Office, I changed the subject.

Before the papal audience was over, Niccolini requested that Galileo be allowed to stay at the Villa Medici even during his trial, but the pope denied the request, saying he would be given good rooms at the Holy Office, inside the Vatican.

When I got home I did not tell Galileo about the plan to move him to the Holy Office during the trial as I was sure this would worry him a great deal and would make him restless until that time, especially since it is not known yet when they will want him.

I do not like His Holiness’s attitude, which is not at all mollified.

Galileo was then left to fret in the Villa Medici and its gardens for over two months. There was nothing to do but sit in the formal gardens and watch the shadows move on the sundials, and think, and endure. Day followed day, all the same.

On April 9, 1633, his old student Cardinal Francesco Barberini appeared at the Villa Medici to break the long silence. He warned Niccolini that the trial would begin soon, and that Galileo would indeed be ordered to stay at the Holy Office during it.

However, Niccolini wrote to Cioli, I could hide neither the ill health of this good old man, who for two whole nights had constantly moaned andscreamed on account of his arthritic pains, nor his advanced age, nor the hardship he would suffer as a result.

Niccolini therefore persisted with Urban.

… this morning I spoke to His Holiness about it, who said he was sorry that Signor Galilei had gotten involved in this subject, which he considers to be very serious and of great consequence for religion.

Nevertheless, Signor Galilei tries to defend his opinions very strongly; but I exhorted him, in the interest of a quick resolution, not to bother maintaining them, and to submit to what he sees they want him to hold or believe about any detail of the Earth’s motion. He was extremely distressed by this, and, as far as I am concerned, since yesterday he looks so depressed that I fear greatly for his life.

This whole house is extremely fond of him and feels unspeakably sorry about it.

Spies and rumormongers were spreading every kind of story explaining the situation, but it still was not clear to those in Galileo’s camp what was going on in the Vatican, or why. But understanding or not, the day came; and the trial began. On April 12, 1633, at ten in the morning, Galileo was escorted into the Vatican through the Arch of Bells to the palace of the Holy Office, a domed building on the south side of St. Peter’s Cathedral. Swiss Guards led the little contingent of inquisitors and the accused man down the halls to a small room, walled with white plaster and decorated only by a single large crucifix. A large desk occupied the center of the room; the inquisitors stood behind it, the accused before it, and a Dominican nun serving as recording scribe sat at a tall writing desk to the side. Servants stood in waiting in the hall outside, silent and unnoticed.