The members of the Lunar Society, who had once gathered together so often, gradually scattered across the world after the Birmingham riots, keeping in touch through letters.
Yet even those who remained in Birmingham no longer drank themselves half-senseless and walked home by moonlight as they had in the past.
Birmingham's streets were far more prosperous than in their youth now, and far more dangerous as well. They were not the only drunkards on the streets.
Especially after that banquet at the Royal Hotel, the drunken, furious crowd had not only smashed the glass but also set fire to the conference hall.
Perhaps some people enjoyed "double happiness," but for certain unlucky souls, such good fortune was hard to come by. "Misfortunes never come singly" was much more likely to find them.
Old Watt probably wished he had some Felix Felicis, because not only had little James Watt joined a radical revolutionary organization, but Gregory Watt had also contracted tuberculosis.
It was agonizing for the white-haired to bury the black-haired, but there was currently no cure for the disease. When Georgiana returned to the seaside restaurant, Napoleon and the others were examining a gift from Soho: a "Sidereal Clock."
This clock was not meant to tell ordinary time. It measured the intervals at which a star appeared consecutively on the observer's meridian. It could be called an instrument used only by astronomers.
It stood inside a three-foot-tall gilded case, topped with a blue enamel sphere decorated with stars. It looked very much like a celestial globe, and a statue of Urania stood atop it.
Napoleon had been very interested in astronomy when he was young, but few people knew that. He had told her himself.
She had told only the librarian at Petit Trianon, yet somehow Soho had learned of