This touching appeal to the mercy of the judges of the Holy Office can scarcely be read without feelings of the profoundest pity for the unhappy old man, who, in the evening of his days, felt compelled by dread of the stake to deny his scientific convictions. In looking at the defence in a judicial light, in spite of mistrust in the truthfulness of the accused, for which there is some justification, it must be allowed that his statements about the proceedings of sixteen years before, agree entirely with all his letters and actions from 1616 to 1632. In view of this state of the case, Galileo’s remark in his defence that “he had received that certificate from the very person who had intimated the command to him,” possesses increased significance. His whole defence is intended to convince the judges that the two particulars “not to teach” and “in any way” were unknown to him up to the day of his first hearing, or, as he says, to avoid direct contradiction, “he had lost all recollection of them.” He obviously thinks that the gravity of the indictment lies in these words. But he seems to be absolutely ignorant of their having been issued to him after the previous admonition of the Cardinal, by the Commissary-General of the Inquisition, with the threat that “otherwise they would proceed against him in the Holy Office,” indeed, by the above remark he decidedly contradicts it. Apologists of the Inquisition at any price, of the stamp of Mgr. Marini, do not fail to adopt the only means left to them, and call Galileo’s defence “childish evasions unworthy of so great a man, which are sure signs of guilt.”[380] We are of opinion, on the contrary, that the confident hopes of a favourable issue of his trial, by which, as appears from the replies of his correspondents and Niccolini’s despatches, Galileo was animated up to the last moment, by no means comport with consciousness of guilt.