Note 359 — Chapter VII · THE TRIAL BEFORE THE INQUISITION.

Comp. Niccolini’s despatch to Cioli of 16th April. (Op. ix. pp. 440, 441.) During our stay in Rome in the spring of 1877, Leone Vincenzo Sallua, the Father Commissary-General of the Holy Office, was kind enough to show us the apartments occupied by Galileo in the Palace of the Inquisition. The rooms are all large, light, and cheerful, and on one side you enjoy the prospect of the majestic dome of St. Peter’s, and on the other of the beautiful gardens of the Vatican. It is worthy of note that all the rooms assigned to Galileo and his servant are entirely shut off by a single door, so that but one key was required to make the inmates of these handsome apartments prisoners. With all its consideration for Galileo’s person, the Inquisition never forgot a certain prudence which had perhaps become a second nature to it. We prefix a little ground plan of the rooms, made by ourselves on the spot.