in the King's cabinet, and that it was not known what had become of them.[1] Further efforts were fruitless. All that he could get from the French Government was the doubtful promise that the papers should be restored when found.
Two years later, in August, 1817, he again attacked Count Pradel on the subject,[2] and was assured that they were not in the cabinet of the royal palace; he might have a search made among the archives in the Louvre, they might have been put aside there.[3] Marini suspected that the papers had been purloined, and asked the minister of police, Count Decazes, to help him in his search. He, however, referred him to the Minister of the Interior,[4] that is, to the place where he had begun his inquiries three years before. Afterwards he applied to the president of the ministry, the Duke of Richelieu, and to the influential M. de Lainé, but with no more success than before.
In 1820 Venturi applied to Delambre, Secretary of the Academy of Sciences, with the request to get for him, if possible, extracts from and copies of the Acts of the trial, as he was urgently in want of them for the second volume of his "Memorie e lettere inedite fuora o disperse di Galileo Galilei." Delambre eagerly took up the question. Some light is thrown on the steps he took by the following note to Barbier of 27th June, only published a few months ago:—
"Le secretaire perpétuel de l'Académie pour les Sciences Mathématiques est venu pour avoir l'honneur de converser avec M. Barbier, sur un article intéressant de biographie astronomique, le procés de Galilée et les pièces originales dont M. Barbier a été longtemps dêpositaire. Il desire cette conversation pour lui-même et pour M. Venturi, etc., Delambre."[5]
Three days later Delambre wrote to Venturi that the original Acts certainly had been at Paris some years ago,
