before the Holy Congregation.[1] Noailles told Cardinal Antonio of this most favourable result with joyful emotion, who said at once: "Good! good! and I will speak to all the cardinals of the Holy Congregation."[2] They were apparently justified in entertaining the most sanguine hopes, but the future taught them that all this was nothing but fair speeches with which Urban had taken leave of the French ambassador. For there can be no doubt that if the Pope, with bis absolute power, had been in earnest about Galileo's liberation, the Congregation would not have been slow to comply with his wishes. Galileo, however, remained as before, a prisoner in his villa at Arcetri, which he had meanwhile bought, and the papal favour, of which a promise had been held out, was limited to allowing him, at the end of September, to accept an invitation from the Grand Duke to visit him at his Villa Mezzomonte, three miles from Florence,[3] and on 16th October to leave his place of exile for one day to greet the Count de Noailles, at Poggibonsi, in passing through it on his way to France.[4] This was the extent of the papal clemency for the present, and it was not till the old man was quite blind and hopelessly ill with one foot in the grave, that any humane feeling was awakened for him at the Vatican.
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