It is hard to pass an adverse judgment on such a hero of science; and yet the man who repeatedly denies before his judges the scientific convictions for which he had striven and laboured for half a century, who even proposes in a continuation of his monumental work on the two chief systems of the world to annihilate all the arguments therein adduced for the recognition of the only true system, can never be absolved by the historical critic from the charge of weakness and insincere obsequiousness. It was, however, the century the opening of which had been ominously marked by the funeral pile of Giordano Bruno, and but eight years before, the corpse of Marc’Antonio de Dominis,—the famous Archbishop of Spalato, who had died suddenly in the prisons of the Engelsburg during his trial before the Inquisition,—had, after the sentence of the Holy Tribunal, been taken from its resting place and publicly burnt in Rome, together with his heretical writings. CHAPTER VIII. _THE TRIAL CONTINUED._ Galileo allowed to return to the Embassy.—His Hopefulness.—Third Hearing.—Hands in his Defence.—Agreement of it with previous Events.—Confident Hopes of his Friends.—Niccolini’s Fears.—Decision to examine Galileo under threat of Torture.—Niccolini’s Audience of the Pope.—Informed that the Trial was over, that Galileo would soon be sentenced, and would be imprisoned.—Final Examination.—Sent back to “_locum suum_.”—No Evidence that he suffered Torture or was placed in a Prison Cell.