Four times was the old man summoned into the presence of the Holy Office, though never when the Pope was presiding. In his first examination held on the 12th of April, he told how he thought he had obeyed the decree of 1616 as his _Dialogo_ did not defend the Copernican doctrine but rather confuted it, and that in his desire to do the right, he had personally submitted the book while in manuscript to the censorship of the Master of the Sacred Palace, and had accepted all the changes he and the Florentine Inquisitor had required. He had not mentioned the affair of 1616 because he thought that order did not apply to this book in which he proved the lack of validity and of conclusiveness of the Copernican arguments.[271] With remarkable, in fact unique, consideration, the Holy Office then assigned Galileo to a suite of rooms within the prisons of the Holy Office, allowed him to have his servant with him and to have his meals sent in by the ambassador. On the 30th after his examination, they even assigned as his prison, the Ambassador's palace, out of consideration for his age and ill-health. [Footnote 271: Ibid: 80-81.] In his second appearance (April 30), Galileo declared he had been thinking matters over after re-reading his book (which he had not read for three years), and freely confessed that there were several passages which would mislead a reader unaware of his real intentions, into believing the worse arguments were the better, and he blamed these slips upon his vain ambition and delight in his own skill in debate.[272] He thereupon offered to write another "day" or two more for the _Dialogo_ in which he would completely refute the two "strong" Copernican arguments based on the sun's spots and on the tides.[273] Ten days later, at his third appearance, he presented a written statement of his defence in which he claimed that the phrase _vel quovis modo docere_ was wholly new to him, and that he had obeyed the order given him by Cardinal Bellarmin over the latter's own signature. However he would make what amends he could and begged the Cardinals to "consider his miserable bodily health and his incessant mental trouble for the past ten months, the discomforts of a long hard journey at the worst season, when 70 years old, together with the loss of the greater part of the year, and that therefore such suffering might be adequate punishment for his faults which they might condone to failing old age. Also he commended to them his honor and reputation against the calumnies of his ill-wishers who seek to detract from his good name."[274] To such a plight was the great man brought! But the end was not yet. [Footnote 272: Doc. in Favaro: 83.] [Footnote 273: Ibid: 84.] [Footnote 274: Ibid: 85-87.]