Galileo’s proceedings at this time, as before and after, prove that he was totally unaware of this assumed prohibition; anyhow, he pays not the slightest attention to it. He sends copies of his work to the most eminent persons at Rome; is delighted at its immense success; arms himself for defence against the indignant Aristotelians, but never thinks of a conflict with the ecclesiastical authorities, which, sincere Catholic as he was, would have given him great pain apart from consequences. Even in June and July there were some ill-disposed persons, to the great annoyance of Riccardi, zealously trying to discover something in the book which could be formulated into an accusation against the author. The title page was adorned with a drawing of three dolphins, one with the tail of another in its mouth, with an insignificant motto above it.[267] This illustration was impugned because it had not been submitted to ecclesiastical approbation, and they expatiated with more malice than wit upon the meaning of the mysterious device. It was a great relief to Riccardi’s mind when it was pointed out by Count Magalotti that the same illustration appeared on almost all the works which issued from the press of Landini at Florence, where the “Dialogues” had been printed. This bait, then, had not taken, and Galileo’s foes, worthy members of the Society of Jesus, had to find some other mode of ensnaring him. They now brought against him the twofold reproach, that the preface was printed in different type from the rest of the book, which was true; and that several weighty arguments which the Pope had brought against the Copernican system in conversation with Galileo, though they might perhaps have been adduced in the MS., were not in the printed book; this was a lie.[268] The truth however at once came to light, for these “weighty arguments” were reduced to one, which was brought forward at the conclusion of the “Dialogues.” But Jesuitism, as we shall soon see, drew very singular conclusions from the very natural circumstance that it was mentioned by Simplicius, the defender of Ptolemy. The brethren of Father Grassi and Father Scheiner,[269]—the latter of whom had been for a few months at Rome, and was greatly incensed at the “Dialogues,”—well knew how to lay hold of the Pope by his most vulnerable points, his personal vanity and boundless ambition, which made him feel every contradiction like an attack on his authority. They were assiduous in confirming Urban in his opinion that the Copernican doctrine endangered the dogmas of the Christian Catholic faith in the highest degree, and now represented that the publication of the “Dialogues” was an incalculable injury to the Church. Besides this, they persuaded the Pope that in his latest work Galileo had again, though this time under concealment, entered into theological interpretations of Holy Scripture. They thus stigmatised him as a rebel against the papal