The University of Zurich now offered to let the exile come there and teach what he wished. Thither he journeyed and there his restless mind seemed for the first time to find a home. His writings were slowly making head, and around him there clustered a goodly group of students who believed in him and loved him. In the midst of this oasis in a troubled life, word came from some of the old-time friends he had known in Rome. They were now in Venice, and wished to have him come there and lecture. Bruno thought that his little leaven was leavening the whole lump--he was not without ambition--he was flattered by the invitation. He accepted it and went to Venice. It was simply a ruse to get the man within striking distance. Very soon after his arrival in Venice he was arrested by agents of the Inquisition and secretly taken to Rome. He was lodged in a dungeon of the Castle Saint Angelo. Just what his experience was there we can not say--the horrors of it all are not ours, for no friend of Bruno's was allowed to approach, and what he there wrote was destroyed. We do know, however, that he was asked to recant, and we know he refused. We also know that he repeated his heresies and hurled back into the teeth of his accusers the invective they heaped upon him. Bribery, persuasion, threat and torture were tried in turn, but all in vain, for Bruno would not swerve. Unlike Savonarola his quivering flesh could not wring from his heart an apology. He scorned the rack and thumbscrew, declaring they could not reach his soul. He knew that death would be the end; he prayed for it, and even thought to hasten it by an aggravating manner and harshness of speech toward his captors, seemingly quite unnecessary. For seven long years he was in prison. He was burned alive on the Seventh of February, Sixteen Hundred, aged fifty-two. When bound to the stake he turned his face from the crucifix that was held before him, and sought to kiss the fagots. His ashes were thrown to the four winds. Thus perished Bruno. * * * * * In the year Fifteen Hundred Sixty-four, Galileo Galilei was born; consequently, he was thirty-six years old when Bruno was executed. He had known Bruno, had attended many of his lectures, and had followed his career with interest; and while he agreed with him concerning the Copernican theory of the earth's revolution, he took exceptions to Bruno's arbitrary ways of presenting the matter, and also to his scathing criticisms of theology. At this time Galileo could not see that the extravagant words of Bruno were largely forced from him by the violence of the opposition he had encountered. Galileo fully believed that Bruno had been put to death for treason to the Church, and not on account of his astronomical teachings.