Reaching the topmost gallery, above which loomed the bell tower itself, Galileo paused to catch his breath and noticed that Pettirosso alone had followed him.
“Where is Vincenzio?” he demanded.
“He’ll be right along, maestro,” Pettirosso assured him. “He stopped to look out the lower gallery door. Woman trouble! He thinks she did not come to see him perform to-day!”
“Vincenzio!” Galileo called. “We have no time to waste!”
The next moment his heavy-set assistant panted up the steps, and indeed he did not look well. There were dark rings under his eyes and his handsome face looked pale.
“I told you, Vincenzio, you should not have exerted yourself last night,” Pettirosso said with a laugh.
“Silence!” Vincenzio roared, then bowed subserviently to Galileo. “I’m very sorry, maestro. I am ready.”
Galileo took from the pocket of his gown two square silk nets, and laying them flat upon the gallery floor, he carefully placed an iron ball in the center of each. Then grasping the corners of the nets, he suspended a ball from each hand, and stepped forward to the marble parapet. Vincenzio seized him firmly by the ankles, and Galileo leaned forward until he could see the crowd far below.
“Now watch!” he called down in the still, noon air.
He held out the balls, and when his hands were on an even plane he released them at the same instant. Down they plummeted, the silk nets floating off almost invisibly while the balls grew smaller as Galileo watched them; then for an instant they too seemed to disappear, and he saw two simultaneous puffs of dust as the balls struck the earth.
“We have done it!” he said, smiling to his assistants, and pointed to another pair of one-pound and ten-pound balls upon the floor of the gallery. “Be ready with them.”
Galileo hastened down the steps of the tower, half expecting that some of the spectators would come up to congratulate him; but he met not a soul, and when at last he came out through the tower door the old round-shouldered bell-ringer, who sat upon a bench a little distance away, looked at Galileo incuriously.
“It’s impossible!” Galileo murmured. “Don’t they understand?”
But already the greater part of the crowd had wandered away from the piazza, clearly disappointed by the exhibition, and as Galileo rounded the tower to the roped-off area, he saw that only a few of the professors and students remained. He looked up and saw Pettirosso and Vincenzio leaning over the balcony — doubtless they, too, were disappointed in the lack of reaction.
“Look, then,” he cried to the little group, “did not the bodies strike the ground at the same moment?”
Two of the professors came over and shook Galileo’s hand.
“Indeed, my boy,” said one, “You have proven your point. You have won our admiration.”
Galileo turned to the others.
“Are there any of you who have questions? My assistants are ready to repeat the experiment at once.”
Nobody seemed to have any questions. Disappointed, Galileo looked up at his assistants on the tower and started to give the prearranged signal for quitting. Instead he uttered a startled shout.
For at that moment both students seemed to lose their balance — they slipped over the parapet and came diving down headfirst. There was plenty of time to observe the difference in their sizes — Vincenzio, full-fleshed and heavy, Pettirosso, small and bird-like.
And once again two bodies struck the earth at the same instant.
Galileo was sitting at his supper table that evening, unable to eat a morsel, when a messenger from the university brought word that the rector wished to see him.
The young professor found the rector behind his desk, looking grave in the dark robes and fur-trimmed hood of his office. Through the windows opening on the courtyard sounded a chorus of students’ voices chanting:
“Grillo, mio Grillo,
Se tu vo’ moglie dillo...”
“Many in the town believe the Devil hurled your assistants over the parapet,” the old man said. “You yourself ran up to the tower directly after their fall; after stationing students at the tower door to see that no one escaped. Your inquiry was most thorough, I recall. The bell-ringer Aproino says that no one passed him all the time he was watching.”
“He must have left his post when the accident happened,” Galileo said, a desperate note in his voice.
“It could only have been for a moment or two — not long enough for anyone to descend the six flights from the top and escape. To make it worse, Aproino claims he heard the Devil stamp his foot.”
“You don’t believe that!”
“I am merely reminding you of the forces arrayed against you. There is bound to be an official investigation, and I fear you had better he able to explain what happened on that tower.”
“I told you, my dear rector. They merely leaned too far forward and fell. When I was up there, I had Vincenzio hold my ankles because I, too, felt the downward pull.”
“Both of them fell together — accidentally?”
“Why not? One could have tried to reach out to save the other—”
“Did you see one of them reach out? I stood by your side, and I failed to. The other witnesses say they did not merely fall over the parapet — they were thrown!”
“They imagine it — there was no one in the tower except my two assistants!”
“Do you really believe that, Galileo Galilei? Then what became of the second set of iron shots?”
Galileo gasped. “How did you know?”
“Do you forget that I followed you up to the gallery? I looked for the second set, because only a few moments before you said your assistants were ready to repeat the experiment. That meant they must have had duplicate shots in the tower. Is that not true?”
“It is true,” Galileo admitted.
“Then you will have to explain to the authorities what happened to them. Many will say the Devil took them. You will have to prove he did not, and you know that I cannot lie in this matter.”
Galileo passed his hand nervously through his red hair. “Perhaps if I knew where the sand came from...”
“Sand?”
“Scattered on the floor of the gallery. It wasn’t there the first time I went up — I can swear to that!”
“You have only a day or two to think about it — the time it will take authorities to travel from Florence. I warned you that flaunting your discoveries in the faces of your colleagues might end disastrously. Now you must pay for that flagrancy.”
“I will find the one who did it,” Galileo said, his voice shaking.
“For your own sake, my boy, I hope you do.”
Leaving the rector’s chambers, Galileo walked the streets for a long time with despair in his heart, coming at last in front of the Duomo. There he watched an old woman come out of the church, stop, then go back and rub the dark-green bronze doors where a little lizard in bas relief shone like gold. Hundreds rubbed the spot every day, considering it lucky, and Galileo sighed, wishing that he were credulous enough to comfort himself so easily. But talk might help him to see a light. He turned his steps in the direction of Jofre Tarrega’s.
A knock on the door brought Guilia, but this time the woman did not welcome him.
“Signor Tarrega has been ill all day,” she said sternly, “but he said he would speak to you himself. Wait here.”
His heart numb, scarcely believing his ears, Galileo stared at the closed door, until it opened again. Jofre Tarrega stood before him.
“I’ve been expecting you,” Tarrega said, coldly ironical. “The rector has told me the news. What proud triumph you must have felt when you let go those nets and saw the two iron balls hit the ground at the same instant! But such hubris calls down its own destruction, and you have brought ruin upon yourself. I wash my hands of you, and so docs Livia, who returned from Lucca in time to hear of this fiasco. You are no longer welcome in this house.”