he wrote, "that I may study and make plain His works." But
still, that he could not make his discoveries known was a constant,
bitter disappointment to him.

In astronomy he found a means of using his mighty mathematical genius
for his own pleasure and amusement. The Pope had, in seeking to subdue
him, merely supplied the exact conditions he required to do his
work--yet neither knew it. So mighty is Destiny: we work for one thing
and fail to get it, but in our efforts we find something better.

The simple, hard-working gardeners with whom Copernicus lived, had a
reverent awe for the great man; they guessed his worth, but still had
suspicions of his sanity. His nightly vigils they took for a sort of
religious ecstasy, and a wholesome fear made them quite willing not to
do anything that might disturb him.

So passed the days away, and from a light-hearted, ambitious man,
Copernicus had grown old and bowed, and nearly blind from constant
watching of the stars and writing at night.

But his book, "The Revolution of the Heavenly Bodies," was at last
complete. For forty years he had worked at it, and for twenty-seven
years, he himself says, not a day or a night had passed without his
having added something to it.

He felt that he had in this book told the truth. If men wanted to know
the facts about the heavens they would find them here. He had approached
the subject with no preconceived ideas; he had ever been willing to
renounce a theory when he found it wrong. He knew what all other great
astronomers had taught, and out of them all he had built a Science of
Astronomy that he knew would stand secure.

But what should he do with all this mass of truth he had discovered? It
was in his own brain, and it was in the three thousand pages of this
book, which had been rewritten five times. In a few years at most, his
brain would be stilled in death; and in five minutes, ignorance and
malice might reduce the book to ashes, and the forty years' labor of
Copernicus--working, dreaming, calculating, weeping, praying--would all
go for naught and be but a tale that is told. Others might have lived
such lives and known as much as he, and all was lost!

To send the book frankly to Rome and ask the Censor for the privilege to
publish it, was out of the question entirely--the request would be
refused, the manuscript destroyed, and his own life might be in danger.

To publish it at home without the consent of his Bishop would be equal