and in the choicest Italian. The Pope was much pleased and had the book read aloud at table, while the general of the Jesuits forbade its mere mention among members of the order.
We may note that Cardinal Bellarmine, who had taken a prominent part in the opposition to Copernican views, had died about the same time as Pope Paul V., so that for this reason also Galileo thought that another visit to Rome would now be expedient. Ill-health and other matters, however, delayed the project, about which Galileo's elder daughter was most enthusiastic. Both daughters were by this time nuns, having taken the veil under the names of Maria Celeste and Arcangela. Galileo had broken up his establishments on leaving Padua, and brought the girls to Florence, the boy Vincenzio, then only four years old, remaining for two years longer with his mother, who, soon after he was removed from her care, married in her own station of life, with Galileo's approval and financial assistance. The convent appeared to be the only resource for the daughters, as their father's means were not enough to make them independent, and the stigma of their birth was a bar to them in other directions, besides furnishing a frequent cause of complaint to Galileo's mother. In course of time Vincenzio was legitimised by the Grand Duke, but it was Maria Celeste who proved of the greatest comfort to her father, Vincenzio being idle, selfish, and extravagant, not unlike his uncle Michelangelo, while Arcangela was frequently ailing and discontented. Many of Maria Celeste's letters are extant and show her constant solicitude for her father; and her anxiety to help him in every possible way, writing out letters for him, mending or laundering his linen, making little delicacies to tempt his appetite, and so on, as she found occasion.
