The Shadow of Great Britain

Chapter 954: Chapter 40 Distinctive Nobility_2

She sat on the sofa, absentmindedly observing the people coming and going around Arthur.

”He must be a British noble, and of not low status, because even the serious and arrogant Paris Police Chief Henry Jissoke is toasting him. Jissoke never puts on such a kindly face when facing my father...”

”Did Chopin and Mr. Mendelssohn also go over? They seem to be quite familiar; perhaps he is a pianist among the nobility? No, maybe he is managing the family’s banking business? The Mendelssohn Family is certainly a famous banking family in Germany. If he’s in the banking business, then he surely doesn’t lack money. The English nobles themselves are wealthier than the French nobles...”

”Ah... that’s Mr. Hugo, and Vini, and the fat one is... Mr. Dumas! Is he so well-acquainted with people in the literary circles? Is he a patron of the arts? He seems to have rather good taste, maybe he even owns a few theaters. Every day after tea, he goes to watch plays until the evening, then attends a concert at the music hall, and afterward has the police escort us home...”

”That is... the director of the Paris Observatory, Mr. Arago, the lifelong secretary of the Academy of Sciences? And the editor-in-chief of the ’Annals of Chemistry and Physics,’ Mr. Guy Lusac? Is he also interested in natural philosophy? Oh no, he looks a bit pale, and his forehead is sweating—is he feeling unwell? Or is it too hot in the room? There certainly are too many guests today. He is from Britain, where it rains all the time. He probably isn’t very accustomed to the warm weather in Paris...”

At this moment, Arthur was still unaware that he had suddenly acquired a bunch of non-existent industries under his name.

Although he was already considered a wealthy man in the eyes of the average person, compared to the bunch of people who came to the Kaidao Sai Mansion tonight, he was nothing more than a complete pauper.

Over the past three years, he did make quite a bit of money, some of it clean, and some not so clean. But as someone who had kicked the gates of Hell and then slipped back, after he returned, he successively donated quite a lot of wealth to the Poorhouse, the University of London, and the Royal Society.

Currently, his assets only included about 700 British Pounds in liquid funds, a three-story Baroque villa near London Hyde Park, Brunel Bridge Construction Company stocks valued at about 2,000 Pounds, and 15% of the ’British’ newspaper shares.

If all these assets were converted into cash, it would amount to roughly over 90,000 Francs.

This sum, although it sounds frightening, doesn’t even match Miss Emily’s dowry and is far from the definition of middle income by the standard of the real English nobility—Earl of Dalmo.

After all, in the eyes of Earl of Dalmo, the standard for middle income is an annual income of 40,000 British Pounds, which is 800,000 Francs.

If Earl of Dalmo is unwilling to lower this standard, then Arthur doesn’t have to worry about falling into the middle-income trap for the rest of his life. Because with Arthur’s jumping ability, even with a running start, he couldn’t touch the bottom of this trap, which indeed is something to celebrate.

Of course, Arthur’s most pressing anxiety at the moment wasn’t the middle-income trap, but Arago and Guy Lusac standing in front of him.

Before stepping into the middle-income trap, he was already standing on the brink of the natural philosophy trap.

”I’ve already seen your paper on the derivation of Euler’s equations. The introduction of the viscosity coefficient as a constant is indeed a groundbreaking move. It’s a pity that with our current computational abilities, it’s still a long way before this formula can be applied in the technical field.”

”Perhaps we can further optimize this equation. It seems that Navier is currently entirely engrossed in it.”

”I heard that Mr. Babbage of the Royal Society is working on developing a differential machine. If this machine eventually comes to fruition, even if Navier’s work doesn’t succeed, we could still make preliminary use of this formula.”

”By the way, there’s also Coriolis’s force. I heard you only took two puffs of a cigar to find its mathematical expression?”

”Arthur, you see... if we... oh, what’s wrong? Not feeling well?”

Arthur forced a smile and said, ”Gentlemen, I think maybe I’ve had a little too much to drink, and I’m feeling a bit dizzy.”

Upon hearing this, Guy Lusac laughed heartily and said, ”True enough, tonight is a time for festivities, and while natural philosophy is also intoxicating, it should not overshadow the main theme of the banquet. You are so young, at the age for enjoying oneself; go and dance a bit to refresh your mind, it will benefit your future work.”

Arthur felt relieved as he saw the two great scholars giving their approval.

Paris has this drawback; the scholars here are not just academic figures but also political ones.

At high-society banquets in London, it is usually impossible to encounter these renowned natural philosophy researchers on a large scale. But in Paris, the atmosphere is quite different, carrying somewhat the taste of scholars seeking office, and what’s worse, those who reach the top of the political arena usually dabble in theoretical research. Chatting with them is not enjoyable at all.

Yet, on the other hand, Arthur felt a tinge of sadness in his heart.

To borrow a phrase from Happy Hometown, ’When Lord Ge was here, it seemed nothing unusual, but since his passing, there has been no one like him.’ Back when Sir Isaac Newton was alive, Britain only needed Newton in the field of theory to suppress France in mathematics, optics, and astronomy. But ever since Newton passed away, Britain in the field of theory has returned to its rightful place in Europe.