Thus we see that the fable of Galileo’s imprisonment has been adopted by several authors without any historical foundation, and this is to a far greater extent the case with the famous story of the torture to which he is said to have been subjected. As it has held its ground, although only sporadically, even up to the most recent times,[430] it seems incumbent on us to go more deeply into this disputed question. Curiously enough, it is towards the end of the eighteenth century that we find the first traces of this falsehood, and from the fact that three _savans_, Frisi,[431] Brenna,[432] and Targioni,[433] who wrote lives of Galileo at that time, raised a protest against it. Although they were not then able, as we are now, to base their arguments upon the Acts of the trial, they had even then authentic materials in their hands—the despatches between Niccolini and Cioli,[434] then recently published by Fabroni—which rendered it utterly improbable that the old man had been placed upon the rack. These materials were thoroughly turned to account eighty years later by T. B. Biot, in his essay, “La verité sur le procès de Galilei.”[435] He clearly showed from the reports of the ambassador that Galileo had neither suffered torture during his first stay in the buildings of the Holy Office, from 12-30th April, when he daily wrote to Niccolini,[436] and was in better health when he returned to the embassy than when he left it;[437] nor during the three days of his second detention, from 21-24th June, at the end of which he was conducted by Niccolini, on the evening of the 24th, to the Villa Medici.[438] On 6th July he set out thence, “in very good health,” for Siena, and in spite of his advanced age performed four miles on foot for his own pleasure,[439] which an infirm old man of seventy, if he had suffered torture a fortnight before, would surely not have been able to do. But all these plain indications go for nothing with some historians, whose judgment is warped by partisanship, and who are not willing to give up the notion that Galileo did suffer the pangs of torture. And so we find this myth, at first mentioned by a few authors as a mere unauthentic report, assuming a more and more distinct form, until it is brought forward, with acute and learned arguments, as, to say the least, very probable, by Libri, Brewster, Parchappe, Eckert, and others. These writers base their assertion on the following passage in the sentence:— “And whereas it appeared to us that you had not stated the full truth with regard to your intention, we thought it necessary to subject you to a rigorous examination (_examen rigorosum_), at which (without prejudice however, to the matters confessed by you, and set forth as above with regard to your said intention) you answered like a good Catholic.”