GALILEO'S reputation was now rapidly increasing: his lectures were
attended by many persons of the highest rank; among whom were the
Archduke Ferdinand, afterwards Emperor of Germany, the Landgrave of
Hesse, and the Princes of Alsace and Mantua. On the expiration of the
first period for which he had been elected professor, he was rechosen
for a similar period, with a salary increased to 320 florins. The
immediate occasion of this augmentation is said by Fabroni[26], to have
arisen out of the malice of an ill wisher of Galileo, who, hoping to do
him disservice, apprized the senate that he was not married to Marina
Gamba, then living with him, and the mother of his son Vincenzo. Whether
or not the senate might consider themselves entitled to inquire into the
morality of his private life, it was probably from a wish to mark their
sense of the informer's impertinence, that they returned the brief
answer, that "if he had a family to provide for, he stood the more in
need of an increased stipend."
During Galileo's residence at Padua, and, according to Viviani's
intimation, towards the thirtieth year of his age, that is to say in
1594, he experienced the first attack of a disease which pressed
heavily on him for the rest of his life. He enjoyed, when a young man, a
healthy and vigorous constitution, but chancing to sleep one afternoon
near an open window, through which was blowing a current of air cooled
artificially by the fall of water, the consequences were most disastrous
to him. He contracted a sort of chronic complaint, which showed itself
in acute pains in his limbs, chest, and back, accompanied with frequent
hæmorrhages and loss of sleep and appetite; and this painful disorder
thenceforward never left him entirely, but recurred intermittingly, with
greater or less violence, as long as he lived. Others of the party did
not even escape so well, but died shortly after committing this
imprudence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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