“I am writing in bed, to which I have been confined for sixteen hours with severe pains in my loins, which, according to my experience, will last as much longer. A little while ago I had a visit from the commissary and the fiscal who conduct the inquiry. They have promised and intimated it as their settled intention to set me at liberty as soon as I am able to get up again, encouraging me repeatedly to keep up my spirits. I place more confidence in these promises than in the hopes held out to me before, which, as experience has shown, were founded rather upon surmises than real knowledge. I have always hoped that my innocence and uprightness would be brought to light, and I now hope it more than ever. I am getting tired of writing, and will conclude.”[366] The second examination of Galileo took place on 30th April. It has hitherto astounded all those who have studied this famous trial; for while at the close of his first depositions, Galileo decidedly denied having defended the Copernican system in his “Dialogues,” and even asserted that he had done just the contrary, at the second hearing, almost without waiting for the Inquisitor’s questions, he makes a humble declaration, which, roundabout as it is, contains a penitent confession that he had defended it in his book. The cause of this change in Galileo is explained by a most interesting letter from the Commissary-General of the Inquisition, Father Vincenzo Maccolani da Firenzuola, who was at that time with the Pope in the Castle of Gandolfo, to Cardinal Francesco Barberini. This letter of 28th April, 1633, first published in full by Pieralisi, the learned librarian of the Barberiana at Rome, whom we have so often quoted, is as follows:[367]—