He stood there red-faced, drawn up, shoulders back, staring at Maculano.

Maculano nodded impassively, instructed the scribe to show Galileo the revised deposition. After reading it, Galileo again signed.

I, Galileo Galilei, affirm the above.

So, Galileo had kept his part of the deal. Confession in return for a reprimand. He had confessed to vainglorious ambition, which had led him to break the rule of an injunction from 1616 that he had never seen—that in fact he knew very well had been forged, either back at the time or recently. He had given Maculano what Maculano had asked for. Now he had to wait for Maculano to do his part.

At first things looked promising. Niccolini’s weekly letter to Cioli reported that Maculano had spoken to Cardinal Francesco Barberini, and after that conversation, on the cardinal’s own authority, the Sanc-tissimus being away at Castel Gondolfo, Francesco Barberini had ordered that Galileo be allowed to move back to the Villa Medici to await the next stage of the proceedings, so that he can recover from the discomforts and his usual indispositions, which keep him in constant torment.

At the Villa Medici, Niccolini wrote in his next letter, he seems to have regained his good health. He was allowed to walk in the extensive gardens daily, even to help with the weeding if he wanted to. He looked hungrily over the wall at the gardens of the Trinita church, and on his behalf Niccolini asked Maculano to ask Cardinal Barberini if Galileo could extend his walks there. This too was allowed. Galileo’s own letters home, to Maria Celeste and various associates, though silent on the trial, as they had to be, were positive in tone. The letters to close colleagues indicated that he expected the Dialogo to survive the trial, revised but with the prohibition lifted.

After reading one of his letters to her, Maria Celeste wrote back the next day.

The joy that your last dear letter brought to me, and the having to read it over and over to the nuns, who made quite a jubilee on hearing its contents, put me into such an excited state that I was seized by a terrible headache that lasted from the fourteenth hour of the morning on into the night, something truly outside my usual experience. I do not say this to reproach you, but to show how I take to heart all your concerns. And though I am not more strongly affected by what happens to you than a daughter ought to be, yet I dare to say that the love and reverence I bear my dearest lord and father does surpass by a good deal that of the generality of daughters. And I know that in like manner he excels most parents in his love of me, his daughter: and that is all I have to say.

Actually she had much more to say, as she wrote almost daily. And he wrote her back at least weekly, and often more frequently, depending on how he was feeling. She gave him news of the convent and of his own household at Il Gioièllo: the fate of the crops and the wine production, the behavior of the donkey, the affairs of the servants, her shock that her brother Vincenzio had not written to Galileo even once, and so on. Always there was encouragement for him, and reassurance that he was blessed by God, and lucky to be who he was. Galileo snatched these letters when they arrived and stopped whatever else he was doing to read them like a man in a desert drinking a long draft of water. Sometimes he shook his head at their contents, with a sad or cynical smile. He kept them in a neat stack, in a basket on a night table by his bed.

During these days of waiting for a judgment, Grand Duke Ferdi-nando had Cioli write to Niccolini to say that the time during which the grand duke was willing to pay for Galileo’s lodging had come to an end, and that Galileo should now pay for his own upkeep. Niccolini let nothing of this particular slight be heard by Galileo himself, though it did get around the villa. Not that it took this news to make Galileo aware of the weak support he was getting from home. He was already aware of it; he would never forget it, or forgive it.

For now, he enjoyed the friendship and support of Niccolini and his wife, the wonderful Caterina Riccardi. Indeed all the staff of the Villa Medici seemed both proud of him and fond of him—like all the other Galilean households, in other words, except that this one was not also afraid of him.

Niccolini wrote sharply back to Florence.

In regard to what Your Most Illustrious Lordship tells me, namely that His Highness does not intend to pay for his expenses here beyond the first month, I can reply that I am not about to discuss this matter with him while he is my guest. I would rather assume the burden myself. The expenses will not exceed 14 or 15 scudi a month, including everything; thus, if he were to stay here six months, they would add up to 90 or 100 scudi between him and his servant.

“A trifling amount for a grand duke to be stingy about,” he said aloud but did not add.

Galileo’s third deposition was to be a formality only, completing the steps every trial for heresy had to go through: confession, defense, abjuration. This was both confession and defense, and what Galileo must confess to and what he could say in his own defense had both already been worked out in the private meeting with Maculano.

When the time came for it—the tenth of May, a month after the first deposition, and three months after his arrival in Rome—Galileo was returned to the Vatican with the document he had carefully written out, copying it over five times before getting it to his own satisfaction.

The white examination room with its crucifix was as before, the occupants likewise.

Maculano began by explaining to Galileo that he had eight days in which to present his defense, if he wanted it.

Having heard this formality, Galileo nodded and said, “I understand what Your Paternity has told me. In reply I say that I do want to present something in my defense, namely in order to show the sincerity and purity of my intention, not at all to excuse my having transgressed in some ways, as I have already said. I present the following statement, together with a certificate by the late Most Eminent Cardinal Bellarmino, written with his own hand by the Lord Cardinal himself, of which I earlier presented a copy by my hand.”

So he persisted with the signed document from Bellarmino’s own hand, which he had done well to ask for, as it was serving as the crucial counterweight to the forged injunction that had been sprung on him during his first deposition. Thus Sarpi’s actions in 1616 now helped him at last.

“For the rest,” Galileo concluded, “I rely in every way on the usual mercy and clemency of this Tribunal.”

After signing his name, he was sent back to the house of the above mentioned Ambassador of the Most Serene Grand Duke, under the conditions already communicated to him.

The written defense Galileo had handed to the Commissary focused mostly on the question of why he had not informed Riccardi that he was writing a book that included a discussion of the Copernican view. He explained that this was because in his first deposition he had not been asked about it, and now he wanted to do that, to prove the absolute purity of my mind, always opposed to using simulation and deceit in any of my actions. Which was almost true.

He described the history of the letter he had obtained from Bellarmino, and the reason for its existence: that he had requested it in order to have an explicit guidance for future action. He went on to claim that what it said in print, frequently consulted by him over the years, had no doubt allowed him to forget any supplementary prohibitions that had only been spoken, if they had been, at one of the many meetings Galileo had initiated in 1616. The new and more extensive prohibitions which I hear are contained in the injunction given to me and recorded, that is, “teaching” and “in any way whatever,” struck me as very new and unheard. I do not think I should be mistrusted about the fact that in the course of fourteen or sixteen years I lost any memory of them, especially since I had no need to give the matter any thought, having such a valid reminder in writing.