CHAPTER XI.—LAST DAYS OF GALILEO.
Galileo had now regained his home but not his freedom, special permission being required before he could go into Florence. He was suffering from several ailments and wished to live within easy reach of his physician. For this purpose he petitioned early in 1634 for leave to move into Florence. The reply was a mandate from the Inquisition forbidding him to ask again, under pain of being at once removed to Rome and actually confined in the prison of the Holy Office. Soon after this his beloved daughter, Sister Maria Celeste, who had almost despaired of seeing him again, owing to serious illness during his long absence, sank under her sufferings and died in April. Galileo was so ill that he expected soon to follow her.
Shortly afterwards he heard definitely, what he might have suspected before, that it was only the fact of his being out of favour with the Jesuits that had brought him into such trouble at Rome. Otherwise he could have held and taught any doctrine he pleased. Perhaps this galvanised him into fresh energy, for he soon set to work again on his projected new "Dialogues on two new sciences". These were Cohesion and Resistance to Fracture, and Uniform, Accelerated, and Projectile Motion, embodying the foundations of Dynamics. The books are full of interesting experiments. The form is similar to that of his forbidden work, the same interlocutors being introduced, and we find them discussing falling bodies, the motion of a pendulum, lines of quickest descent, the para-
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