duties. A letter from Padua, even in the spring of 1609,[1] shows his longing for this salaried leisure. But he is aware that the republic can never offer him such a post, "for it would not be suitable to receive a salary from a free state, however generous and magnanimous, without serving the public for it; because if you derive benefit from the public, you have the public to please, and not a mere private person." He also mentions that he can only hope for such a favour from some absolute sovereign; but it must not be supposed that he wishes for an income without doing anything for it; he was in possession of various inventions, was almost daily making new ones, and should make more if he had the necessary leisure. Galileo adds that it has always been his intention "to offer them to his own sovereign and natural lord before any other, that he may dispose of them and the inventor according to his pleasure; and if it seemed good to his serene highness to accept it, to present him not only with the jewel but with the casket also."
This first attempt of Galileo's, however, to gain a footing at the court of Tuscany seems to have been unsuccessful. At any rate in the extant correspondence of this period there is not a word more on the subject; and a few months later, after the construction of the telescope, he thankfully accepted the chair of mathematics at Padua offered to him for life by the republic. But this invention and the consequent discoveries had meanwhile acquired such vast importance, and had, as we have seen, raised such a storm in the whole educated world, that it now appeared very desirable to the court of Tuscany to attach to itself for ever the man on whom the eyes of scientific Europe were fixed.
The first steps towards this end were taken when Galileo went to Florence in the Easter recess of 1610 to show his telescopic discoveries to Cosmo II., especially the stars which
- ↑ Op. vi, 71-75. It is unfortunately unknown to whom this letter was addressed; but, as appears from the contents, it must have been to some one high in office at the court of Tuscany.
