Now, however, it was put to the test; Galileo released a half-pound weight and a hundred-pound cannon-ball from near the top of the tower, and, needless to say, they reached the ground together.

Of course, the spectators were but little pleased with what they saw.

They could not doubt the evidence of their own senses as to the particular experiment in question; they could suggest, however, that the experiment involved a violation of the laws of nature through the practice of magic.

To controvert so firmly established an idea savored of heresy.

The young man guilty of such iconoclasm was naturally looked at askance by the scholarship of his time.