At last he prepares his great work on the _Revolution of the Heavenly Bodies_, and dedicates it to the pope himself. He next seeks a place of publication. He dares not send it to Rome, for there are the rulers of the older Church ready to seize it. He dares not send it to Wittenberg, for there are the leaders of Protestantism no less hostile. It is therefore intrusted to Osiander, of Nuremberg.[25] But, at the last moment, Osiander's courage fails him. He dares not launch the new thought boldly. He writes a groveling preface; endeavors to excuse Kopernik for his novel idea. He inserts the apologetic lie that Kopernik propounds the doctrine of the movement of the earth, not as a _fact_, but as an _hypothesis_; he declares that it is lawful for an astronomer to indulge his _imagination_, and that this is what Kopernik has done. Thus was the greatest and most ennobling, perhaps, of scientific truths--a truth not less ennobling to religion than to science--forced, in coming into the world, to sneak and crawl.[26] On the 24th of May, 1543, the newly-printed book first arrived at the house of Kopernik. It was put into his hands; but he was on his death-bed. A few hours later he was beyond the reach of those mistaken, conscientious men, whose consciences would have blotted his reputation, and perhaps have destroyed his life. Yet not wholly beyond their reach. Even death could not be trusted to shield him. There seems to have been fear of vengeance upon his corpse, for on his tombstone was placed no record of his life-long labors, no mention of his great discovery. There were graven upon it affecting words, which may be thus simply translated: "I ask not the grace accorded to Paul, not that given to Peter; give me only the favor which thou didst show to the thief on the cross." Not till thirty years after did a friend dare write on his tombstone a memorial of his discovery.[27]