Bellarmino’s eye twinkled a little as he listened to all this. There was no doubt at all that he took the implication. He nodded, looking around his study as if he had lost something in it; perhaps he was remembering Segizzi’s little invasion. Finally, with a small smile, he called in a secretary, and had him write out a certificate for Galileo that he dictated on the spot.

We, Roberto Cardinal Bellarmino, having heard that it is calum-niously reported that Signor Galileo Galilei has in our hand abjured and has also been punished with salutary penance, and being requested to state the truth as to this, declare that the said Galileo has not abjured, either in our hand, or the hand of any other person here in Rome, or anywhere else, so far as we know, any opinion or doctrine held by him. Neither has any salutary penance been imposed on him, but that only the declaration made by the Holy Father and published by the Sacred Congregation of the Index was notified to him, which says that the doctrine attributed to Copernicus, that the Earth moves around the Sun and that the Sun is stationary in the center of the world and does not move from east to west, is contrary to the Holy Scriptures, and therefore cannot be defended or held. In witness whereof we have written and subscribed the present document with our own hand this twenty-sixth day of May 1616.

Still smiling his small ironic smile, Bellarmino signed the document, and when it was sanded and dried, gave it to Galileo, nodding at it as if to indicate that this was the warning he had meant to convey all along: no holding of the opinion, or defending it—but no ban on discussing it. This document would always exist to make that clear.

Guicciardini made his semiannual review of the Villa Medici’s accounts and went through the roof. He dictated at nearly the top of his lungs a letter to Piccena:

Strange and scandalous were the goings-on in the garden during Galileo’s long sojourn in the company and under the administration of Annibale Primi, who has been fired by the Cardinal. Annibale says that he had huge expenses. In any case, anyone can see that they led a riotous life. The accounts are attached. I hope this will be enough to get your philosopher ordered home, so that he will end his campaign to castrate the friars.

It was enough. The same courier brought back Cosimo’s order to Galileo, which was to return to Florence immediately.

During the week of the journey back to Florence, Galileo spoke to no one about what had happened. He looked exhausted and pensive. At night he got out his telescope again, and made his usual viewings of Jupiter. By day he brooded in silence. It was pretty obvious to all of us that his effort had rebounded on him, that by going to Rome to strengthen his position, he had forced the issue in a way that blocked his work entirely, and indeed brought him very close to Inquisitorial danger. And by no means was that over. From the road he wrote bitterly to Sagredo: Of all the hatreds, none is greater than that of ignorance for knowledge.

No doubt it occurred to him often that if he had just stayed in Florence and continued his work without drawing any attention to it, the storm from the clerics might have blown over. Cesi might have been able to campaign gradually on his behalf in Rome, at the level of the cardinals and the College of Rome. It might have worked. Instead Galileo had, in his usual pigheaded way, decided to reason with the pope—to bombard him so suasively that that ultimate arbiter of the situation would be convinced to support him. He couldn’t imagine things turning out any other way.

Either that, or else, as some of us said when he was asleep, he had seen a danger and run straight at it, attacking it in the hope of killing it when it was young. It was quite possible he had made an accurate estimate of the danger, had calculated the odds and made his best attempt. But failed.

CHAPTER NINE

Aurora

Then it seemed to me, that time is nothing else but protraction; but of what, I know not; and I marvel, if it be not of the mind itself?

—ST. AUGUSTINE, CONFESSIONS, BOOK XI

ON HIS UNEASY JOURNEY BACK TO FLORENCE, Galileo wrote letters to all his correspondents, explaining to them why his visit had been such a success, even more so than in 1611. All of them had already heard the story from faster sources, and so did not believe his account, but many wrote back to him reassuringly. A success, no doubt about it.

Every night he complained about the inn food, the flea-bitten beds, the creaky floors, and the endless snoring of the other wayfarers (he himself was a prodigious snorer), so that rather than retire he went out to sleep on the cushioned seat of his litter, or on his telescope stool under a blanket.

One night, at the inn on the road below Montepulciano, he could not sleep at all, and so he sat wrapped in his blanket by his telescope. He crouched to look through it at Jupiter, his own little emblem and clock, and in so many ways the home of his troubles. At this moment it was near the zenith. He marked down the positions of its moons in the chart in his workbook.

After staring at the little orrery of white points for a long time, he got up and went into the stables, where he knew Cartophilus preferred to sleep. He thumped him ungently on the back.

“What?” the ancient one croaked.

“Bring me your master,” Galileo demanded fiercely.

“What, now?”

“Now.”

“Why now?”

Galileo seized the man by his scrawny throat. “I want to talk to him. I have questions for him. Now.”

“Gah,” Cartophilus croaked. Galileo let go of him and he rubbed his neck, frowning resentfully. “Whatever you say, maestro, your wish is my demand, as always, but I cannot produce him immediately.” He reached for a jug of water he kept by his bed at night, took a pull and offered it to Galileo, who waved it off. “I will as soon as I can. It may take a day or two. It would be easiest back in Florence.”

“Quickly,” Galileo ordered. “I’m sick of this. I have some questions.”

The old one gave him a brief glance and looked into his jug. “This trip to Rome was perhaps in reference to him?”

“In a manner of speaking.” Galileo put his big right fist under the man’s nose. “You know more about it than I, I’m sure.”

Cartophilus shook his head unconvincingly.

Galileo humphed. “Of course not. Are you really the Wandering Jew?”

The old one waggled his head equivocally. “The story isn’t really right. Although I do feel cursed. And I’m old. And I have wandered.”

“And are you a Jew?”

“No.”

“Did you mock Christ as he carried the cross to Golgotha?”

“Definitely not. Huh! That’s a story the Gypsies used to tell. A band of them would come into a town, a couple of centuries ago, and explain that they had been made immortal penitents, because they had accidentally insulted Jesus. Practically every town we told the story to opened their gates and treated us like royalty. After that it was a case of transference.”

“So the Wandering Jew came from Jupiter.”

The old man’s eyebrows arced high on his forehead. He took another pull before replying. “You remember something from your last syncope, I take it.”

Galileo growled. “You know better than I.”

“I don’t. But I could see that you wanted to get to Rome to defend yourself.”

“Yes.”

“But it didn’t work as you had hoped.”