iet for a time. He was
getting an old man now, and passed the time studiously enough, partly at
his house in Florence, partly at his villa in Arcetri, a mile or so out
of the town.

Here was a convent, and in it his two daughters were nuns. One of them,
who passed under the name of Sister Maria Celeste, seems to have been a
woman of considerable capacity--certainly she was of a most affectionate
disposition--and loved and honored her father in the most dutiful way.

This was a quiet period of his life, spoiled only by occasional fits of
illness and severe rheumatic pains, to which the old man was always
liable. Many little circumstances are known of this peaceful time. For
instance, the convent clock won't go, and Galileo mends it for them. He
is always doing little things for them, and sending presents to the lady
superior and his two daughters.

He was occupied now with problems in hydrostatics and on other matters
unconnected with astronomy: a large piece of work which I must pass
over. Most interesting and acute it is, however.

In 1623, when the old Pope died, there was elected to the papal throne,
as Urban VIII, Cardinal Barberino, a man of very considerable
enlightenment, and a personal friend of Galileo's, so that both he and
his daughters rejoice greatly, and hope that things will come all right,
and the forbidding edict be withdrawn.

The year after this election he manages to make another journey to Rome
to compliment his friend on his elevation to the pontifical chair. He
had many talks with Urban, and made himself very agreeable.

Encouraged, doubtless, by marks of approbation, and reposing too much
confidence in the individual good-will of the Pope, without heeding the
crowd of half-declared enemies who were seeking to undermine his
reputation, he set about, after his return to Florence, his greatest
literary and most popular work, _Dialogues on the Ptolemaic and
Copernican Systems_. This purports to be a series of four conversations
between three characters. Salviati, a Copernican philosopher; Sagredo, a
wit and scholar, not specially learned, but keen and critical, and who
lightens the talk with chaff; Simplicio, an Aristotelian philosopher,
who propounds the stock absurdities which served instead of arguments to
the majority of men.

The Aristotelians were furious, and represented to the Pope that he
himself was the character intended by Simplicio, the philosopher whose
opinions get alternately