had found in Caccini "great ignorance and a mind full of venom."[1]
But Galileo had only performed half his task by the happy adjustment of the difficulties affecting himself; the more important and grander part of it, the preservation of the Copernican system from the interdict of the Church, had yet to be accomplished. His letter of 6th February to Picchena tells him of the favourable turn in his own affairs, as well as of the noble purposes by which he was animated. He writes:—
"My business, so far as it concerns myself, is completed; all the exalted personages who have been conducting it have told me so plainly, and in a most obliging manner, and have assured me that people are fully convinced of my uprightness and honour, and of the devilish malice and injustice of my persecutors. As far as this point is concerned, therefore, I might return home without delay, but there is a question concerning my own cause which does not concern myself alone, but all those who, during the last eighty years, have advocated in printed works or private letters, in public lectures or private conversations, a certain opinion, not unknown to your Grace, on which they are now proposing to pronounce judgment. In the conviction that my assistance may be of use in the investigation of the matter, as far as a knowledge of those truths is concerned which are proved by the science to which I have devoted myself, I neither can nor ought to neglect to render this assistance, while I shall thereby follow the dictates of my conscience and Christian zeal."[2]
This was magnanimous, and Galileo was entitled, as few others were, to appear as the advocate of science. But unfortunately his warm and perhaps too solicitous efforts for the Copernican cause had a result precisely opposite to the one he intended. He was still under the great delusion that the Roman curia must above all things be convinced of the correctness of the Copernican doctrines. He therefore sought out scepticism on the subject everywhere in the eternal city, combated it eagerly and apparently with signal success. In many of the first houses in Rome, such as the Cesarini's, Ghislieri's, and others, he unfolded before numerous audiences
