On 2nd September he received a visit from his sovereign, who came to console and encourage him in his pitiable situation.[525] A few months later an unknown young man, of striking appearance from his handsome face and the unmistakable evidences which genius always exhibits, knocked at the door of the solitary villa at Arcetri: it was Milton, then twenty-nine years of age, who, travelling in Italy, sought out the old man of world-wide fame to testify his veneration.[526] In December of the same year Galileo became permanently quite blind, and informed Diodati of his calamity on 2nd January, 1638, in the following words:— “In reply to your very acceptable letter of 20th November, I inform you, in reference to your inquiries about my health, that I am somewhat stronger than I have been of late, but alas! revered sir, Galileo, your devoted friend and servant, has been for a month totally and incurably blind; so that this heaven, this earth, this universe, which by my remarkable observations and clear demonstrations I have enlarged a hundred, nay, a thousand fold beyond the limits universally accepted by the learned men of all previous ages, are now shrivelled up for me into such narrow compass that it only extends to the space occupied by my person.”[527] Up to the time when Galileo entirely lost his sight, absolutely nothing had been able to be done for his liberation at Rome. Even the faithful Castelli wrote on 12th September, to Galileo’s son Vincenzo, that he had not been able to do anything whatever for his father; but he piously adds, “I do not fail every morning at holy mass to pray the Divine Majesty to comfort him, to help him, and to grant him His Divine grace.”[528] This precisely indicates the hopeless state of Galileo’s affairs. Just then, during the first few days of December of the same year, darkness closed round him for ever; and not long afterwards, 12th December, Castelli suddenly wrote to him, that he had been given to understand that Galileo had not been forbidden in 1634 to send petitions _direct_ to the Holy Office, but only through other persons.[529] When the decided papal rescript of 23rd March, 1634,[530] is compared with this curious interpretation of it, there can be no doubt that it was intended to enable the curia to take a more lenient view without direct collision with a former mandate. Galileo at once sent Castelli’s letter to the Tuscan Court, with a request for instructions, as he did not wish to do anything without the concurrence of his sovereign.[531] He was informed that he had better draw up a petition to the Holy Office, and get it handed in at Rome through Castelli.[532] The latter had meanwhile informed himself under what formalities Galileo should make his request, and sent him on 19th January, 1638,[533] a draught of the petition, with the remark that it must be sent, together with a medical certificate,