fled with his wife, a sister of one of Maria Celeste's intimates at the convent, leaving his infant baby out at nurse and his invalid father almost alone. Vincenzio, however, was too idle to stay away long from his father's house when the panic was over, and the next year we find him back again helping to choose a villa nearer the convent. Such a one was found at Arcetri, and is still known as Villa Galileo, and contains a room arranged as a Galileo museum.
The plague was not the only cause of delay. Prince Cesi, of the Academy, to whom Galileo intended entrusting the work for superintendence during the printing, died a few weeks after Galileo's return from Rome, and Galileo, being unable on account of the plague to send the MS. away, determined to have it printed at Florence instead of Rome. On hearing this the censor Riccardi desired to look at the book again, but it seemed risky to send the whole work while communications were still interrupted on account of the plague, and Galileo therefore suggested a compromise, under which he was to send to Rome only the additions, the preface and conclusion, not before seen at Rome, while the body of the work should be submitted to a deputy censor at Florence appointed for the purpose. The one chosen, Stefani, Counsellor of the Inquisition in Florence, was so pleased with the work and the tone of humility in which it was written that he not only made none but the slightest verbal alterations, but declared that so far from putting obstacles in the way they ought to have urged Galileo to publish it. But it was otherwise in regard to the preface, which was kept at Rome an unconscionable time and only returned in July, 1631, after the Tuscan Ambassador Niccolini had made formal protest: Stefani was ordered to revise the whole work once more, and then the licence was at length granted for printing the book in Florence.
