The ambassador, Piero Guicciardini, met Galileo on the broad front terrazzo of the villa. He was an elegant man with a finely trimmed black beard, rather cool in his welcome, and so Galileo was likewise. They got through the diplomatic necessities as quickly as possible, after which Guicciardini turned him over to his master of the house, Annibale Primi. Primi proved to be a cheerful man, a tall sanguine figure whose head was set a little before his body. He led Galileo and his contingent to the “two good rooms” Cosimo had ordered him to be provided with. And when Galileo had seen them, and arranged with Cartophilus their disposition, Primi led him through the gardens and up to the high point of the fifty-foot-tall man-made mound.

“This mound is dirt piled onto the nymphaeum of the ancient Acilian gardens. It’s just the extra height you need to get a view over the other hills, see? People often say it’s the best vista in the city.”

The other six hills at their various distances blocked a complete bird’s-eye view of Rome, but the prospect still gave them an almost overwhelming sense of the city’s tumbling vastness—a entire province of rooftops, it seemed to Galileo, like a million inclined planes set up for some supremely complicated experiment, with the Tiber a tin gleam here and there in the smoky expanse. All the other big hills were likewise occupied by great villas, and so appeared as mostly green islands sticking up out of tile-clad waves, the vineyards and cypresses on them creating lines horizontal and vertical.

“This is great,” Galileo said, wandering inside the high point’s circular wall as if on a Venetian altana. “What a city this is. We’ll have to bring up a telescope.”

“I would like that.” Primi pulled a big bottle of wine from his shoulder bag and held it up for Galileo’s inspection, a grin on his face.

“Aha,” Galileo said, bowing slightly. “A man after my own heart.”

“I assumed as much,” Primi said, “given what people say about you. And here we are, after all—on top of the world. You might as well celebrate when you get to a place like this.”

“So true.”

The two men sat on the low wall ringing the summit of the mound, and Primi uncorked the fiasco of wine. He poured tin cups full, and they toasted the day and sat and talked while they drank. Primi was the son of an innkeeper and reminded Galileo of his artisans—a quick man who had seen a lot and knew how to do a lot of things. He told Galileo about the greenhouses and the new galleries, and then they sat and looked at the city and drank. There was a noise to the city as well as smoke, a general grumbling hum. Galileo could see across the roofs to the Janiculum, where just four years before he had triumphantly talked to the pope and displayed his telescope to all the Roman nobility. So much had changed. “It’s a hell of a town,” he said, gesturing at it helplessly. He could not keep his fear entirely at bay, but the wine did loosen the strain of it in a comforting way. He breathed in that bracing effect, straightened up. Here he was, after all. At least now he could fight!

Primi rattled on about the villas on the other hilltops. In the smoky sunset the city turned umber and orange, like a thing of granite under a cloudless sky.

Primi was a very active master of the house; he even helped them each morning to choose which jackets and doublets and tights would be most appropriate for whatever meetings Galileo had that day. He arranged for the traps and drivers, giving the drivers instructions to take particular ways to their destinations so that Galileo would see things in the city that Primi thought he should see.

So out he would go, dressed in his finest tights and one of his best jackets. And the nobles and prelates would meet with him, but they were less enthusiastic. Meetings ended in an hour, other engagements were pled. Something was going on, which was of course the rumor of Bellarmino’s interest. That was enough to put a chill on anyone.

In his bustle and bluster it was not easy to tell if Galileo noticed this, but it seemed certain he must have, and was just trying to pretend all was well. It was either that or else he was even more oblivious than anyone had hitherto suspected. But it seemed more likely that he knew. Every afternoon he would return and drag himself wearily out of the trap and into the villa, having spent the day proclaiming the same thing to everyone: “I am a devout Catholic. My work is to reconcile Copernicanism and the Holy Church. It is an attempt to help the Church, which otherwise will soon find itself contravening obvious facts of God’s world, quite visible to all. That can’t be good for Her! We have to help Her in this hour of need.”

And everyone would have listened to him thinking, Bellarmino. Don’t be where Bellarmino is looking had been a saying in the city for over twenty years. And so when he got back to the villa, and the ambassador would be nowhere to be seen, Annibale Primi’s appearance in the big garden doorway, with a lumpy shoulder bag under his arm and a big grin on his face, would cause Galileo to bow gratefully, and after changing his clothes he would walk up the spiral gravel path to the top of the garden mound, and often stay out there until the stars were twinkling overhead, eating and drinking, and, after calling for his telescope, viewing the city and the stars. On many mornings after these dissolute nights he could barely move, and yet he had new appointments to keep that day. Sometimes we had to dress him like a scarecrow or a tailor’s dummy.

Then off he would go again, slapping himself in the face and drinking cinnamon concoctions, making his rounds every day like a tinker or a mendicant, crisscrossing that immense smoky city of the world, meeting anyone who would give him an invitation, or receive one from Cesi. Sometimes he had little successes; a few new potential allies and supporters met with him at Cesi’s palazzo one day, including a newly appointed cardinal, young Antonio Orsini, who was a Galilean and a potentially important ally. But mostly people kept their distance. Don’t be where Bellarmino is looking.

Thus it was a shock but not really a surprise when one afternoon a papal messenger came to the Villa Medici with an order. Galileo was to meet with Cardinal Bellarmino in the Vatican, on the very next morning.

That night the mood in the villa was tense and foreboding. Galileo did not go up to the mound with Primi, but stayed in his rooms. Twice in the night he called for Cartophilus to fetch him refreshment: first mulled wine, then warmed milk. It did not appear to Cartophilus that he slept at all that night. And so of course Cartophilus got very little also.

IN THE MORNING, two of Bellarmino’s inquisitorial officers of arrest showed up at the villa to convey Galileo and Cartophilus to Bellarmino’s house, on the river side of the Vatican grounds. On the way there Galileo said nothing, though he seemed cheerful enough, face ruddy and eyes bright. Time at last for action, his manner seemed to say. He glanced up frequently at the sky, which was flecked by flat, small gray clouds.

Once inside Bellarmino’s antechamber, the two arresting officers made their bows to Galileo and left. Only servants then remained, standing against the wall—the cardinal’s and Galileo’s, side by side.

Then the cardinal himself entered the room. Galileo went to one knee and found he was nevertheless still taller than the cardinal. Roberto Bellarmino was a very short man.

He was around seventy years old. His neat goatee was white, his hair a salted brown. Dressed in his cardinal’s red, he made a handsome and impressive sight, despite his diminutive size, which made him resemble a clock statue come to life. He greeted Galileo in a quiet, urbane voice. “Rise, great astronomer, and speak with me.”