“Barberini!” he exclaimed. “Maffeo Barberini!”

For once Galileo Galilei was speechless. His jaw dropped, his hand clapped over his open mouth. He glanced wild-eyed at Cartophilus, then threw his arms wide and howled. He hugged La Piera, who had come out with the other servants to see what was going on, and then he called the whole household to join the impromptu celebration. He fell to his knees, crossed himself, looked at the sky, dashed tears from his eyes.

Finally he rose and took Picchena by both hands.

“Barberini? Are you sure? Can it be true? Gracious Grandissimo Cardinal Maffeo Barberini?”

“The very same.”

It was astonishing. The new pope—that very cardinal who had written a poem in honor of Galileo’s astronomical discoveries of 1612; who had argued on Galileo’s side in the debate with Colombe over floating bodies; who had conspicuously stayed away from the proceedings of 1615 that had put Copernicus on the Index; above all, who had written Galileo a letter of regret when Galileo had been too sick to attend a leave-taking breakfast, signing it “Your Brother.” Urbane, worldly, intellectual, literary, liberal, handsome, young—he was only fifty-three, too young for a pope really, as Rome relied on a frequent turnover of popes—which was one reason no one had expected this outcome—but still, there it was. Pope Urban VIII, he had named himself.

Weak with amazement, with enormous, dizzying relief, Galileo called for wine. “Break open a new cask!” Geppo brought him a chair to sit on. “We have to celebrate!” But he was almost too weak to do so.

That night he woke Cartophilus and dragged him out to the telescope.

“What’s going on?” he demanded. “This is new. This didn’t happen before!”

“What do you mean?”

“You know—everything that has been happening this year, I’ve felt it as if it had already happened. It’s been hell. But this, Barberini becoming pope—it’s new! I had no premonition.”

“That’s strange,” Cartophilus said, thinking it over.

“What does it mean?”

Cartophilus shrugged. He met Galileo’s gaze. “I don’t know, maestro. I’m here with you, remember?”

“But did you not know what happened, before you came back as a Gypsy? Don’t you remember this or not remember this?”

“I don’t remember if I remember right or not, anymore. It’s been too long.”

Galileo growled, and raised his hand to cuff the man. “You lie.”

“Not at all, maestro! Don’t hit me. I just don’t know. It’s been too long.”

“But you came to me with the Ganymede, you stay with me and watch me, you don’t go back to Jupiter—and you say you don’t know?” He bunched his fist.

“I stay here because I have nowhere else. Cartophilus has to play his part. And now I’m used to it. I like it. It’s home. The sun, the wind, the trees and birds—you know. This is a real place. You can sit in the dirt. You yourself have noticed how removed they are up there. I don’t think I can go back to that. So, I’m stuck. I have nowhere that is really mine.”

They stared at each other in the darkness. Galileo let his arm fall.

Everything now changed. The Linceans were overjoyed at the opportunity that this new pope represented, what they called a mirabile congiunture. They begged Galileo to finish his treatise, which he was now calling Il Saggiatore. It was the word used to describe those who weighed gold and other valuables—The Assayer—but Galileo meant more than that by it, hoping to suggest the kind of weighing done by those who put all nature on the balance, like Archimedes. The Experimenter, one might say, or The Scientist.

But The Assayer too, sure. In this case, he was weighing Sarsi’s Jesuitical arguments, and finding them wanting. Knowing Pope Urban VIII would be one of the readers of his book—its ultimate reader, its recipient, one might say—he began to write in a more literary and playful style, pastiching the pope’s own liberal writing. He considered what he loved in Ariosto, and took pains to do similar things. He had long since understood that all these debates were a kind of theater, after all.

If Sarsi wants me to believe with Suidas that the Babylonians cooked their eggs by whirling them around in slings, I will do it, but I must add that the cause of this cooking of the eggs was very different from what he suggests. To discover the true cause, I reason as follows: “If we do not achieve an effect which others formerly achieved, then it must be that in our operations we lack something that was part of their success. And if there is just one single thing we lack, then that alone can be the true cause. Now we do not lack eggs, nor slings, nor sturdy fellows to whirl them; yet our eggs do not cook, but merely cool down faster if they happen to be hot. And since nothing is lacking to us except being Babylonians, then being Babylonians is the cause of the hardening of the eggs, and not friction of the air.” And this is what I wished to discover. Is it possible that Sarsi has never observed the coolness produced on his face by the continual rush of air when he is riding post? If he has, then how can he prefer to believe things related by other men as having happened two thousand years ago in Babylon, rather than present events which he himself experiences?

Sarsi says he does not wish to be numbered among those who affront the sages by disbelieving or contradicting them. I say I do not wish to be counted as an ignoramus and an ingrate toward Nature and toward God. For if they have given me my senses and my reason, why should I defer such great gifts to the errors of some mere man? Why should I believe blindly and stupidly what I wish to believe, and subject the freedom of my intellect to someone else who is just as liable to error as I am?

Finally Sarsi is reduced to saying with Aristotle that if the air ever happened to be abundantly filled with warm exhalations in the presence of various other requisites, then leaden balls would melt in the air when shot from muskets or thrown by slings. This must have been the state of the air when the Babylonians were cooking their eggs. At such times things must go very pleasantly for people who are being shot at.

Ha ha! The Linceans laughed; they loved passages like this when Galileo sent them along for revision and approval. This was the first time Galileo had ever submitted drafts of a book to a committee of fellow philosophers, and though he found it frustrating, it was interesting as well. It was going to be a statement with the imprimatur of the Academy of Lynxes; it would have their backing, and with that it would enter the Roman intellectual wars, where the new was now battering the old into the ground. Cesi begged him to finish the book, and then come to Rome and rout the Jesuits utterly. Cesi would publish it in the name of the Linceans, and had already had the title page altered so that the book would now be dedicated to Urban VIII.

Good surprises kept happening. Cesarini was made an official member of the Academy of the Lynxes, and four days later the new pope made him a cardinal. So a Lincean was now a cardinal! And the pope also appointed his own nephew Francesco to be a cardinal—that very same Francesco whom Galileo had just helped to obtain a teaching position at the university in Padua!

Galileo began to believe Cesi: this was indeed a mirabile congiunture. It might even be possible to get Copernicus taken off the list. So he wrote more of his treatise every day. He sent letters to Cesi and the other Linceans, promising to finish the revisions they had suggested to him. Cesi had the publication scheduled in Rome. He urgently wanted Galileo to come to the capital. Galileo wanted it too. He made the request to Picchena to be allowed to go, and after some hesitations, Picchena and the Medici lady regents agreed to the plan. So preparations for another trip to Rome were made, and the book was almost finished.