There are
grounds for believing that they were deliberately destroyed when
Galileo was seized by the Inquisition, lest they should have been
used as evidence against him, or lest they should have compromised
the convent where they were received. But Sister Maria Celeste's
letters to her father have happily been preserved, and most touching
these letters are. We can hardly read them without thinking how the
sweet and gentle nun would have shrunk from the idea of their
publication.
Her loving little notes to her "dearest lord and father," as she used
affectionately to call Galileo, were almost invariably accompanied by
some gift, trifling it may be, but always the best the poor nun had
to bestow. The tender grace of these endearing communications was
all the more precious to him from the fact that the rest of Galileo's
relatives were of quite a worthless description. He always
acknowledged the ties of his kindred in the most generous way, but
their follies and their vices, their selfishness and their
importunities, were an incessant source of annoyance to him, almost
to the last day of his life.
On 19th December, 1625, Sister Maria Celeste writes:--
"I send two baked pears for these days of vigil. But as the greatest
treat of all, I send you a rose, which ought to please you extremely,
seeing what a rarity it is at this season; and with the rose you must
accept its thorns, which represent the bitter passion of our Lord,
whilst the green leaves represent the hope we may entertain that
through the same sacred passion we, having passed through the
darkness of the short winter of our mortal life, may attain to the
brightness and felicity of an eternal spring in heaven.
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