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Chapter 1038: All at a Bargain Price 2
He was not lucky in his youth, and he was not lucky in his adulthood. The saying "Thirty years in the west, thirty years in the east" did not apply to him at all. His two marriages were not smooth, he was always in poverty, and all his children died.

He finally met an emperor of the Holy Roman Empire who was willing to fund his research, but religious wars broke out in Europe. The fighting never ended, and the emperor had no surplus food and was always in arrears with his wages, leaving him starving and cold. In order to pay for his wife's medical treatment, he sold everything he could.

As the saying goes, when people are poor, they have low aspirations. When Kepler was found in Prague by an envoy from the Ming Empire with ulterior motives, he learned from him that there was an emperor in the far East who was very keen on supporting scholars and offered high rewards and generous treatment. He began to feel relieved.

Looking at his current situation, he decided to take a risk rather than live under someone else's roof and struggle for survival. Half a month later, Kepler took the envoy's advance payment and letter of introduction, and took his wife to Amsterdam to board the East India Company's merchant ship.

Since it was the first time that European scholars arrived in Beijing, the whole process was not very smooth. Hong Tao did not know that a scholar named Kepler was coming until the Jinyiwei delivered the news to the palace. This awesome man who made laws for the sky and his wife were standing outside the Meridian Gate, shivering in the northwest wind of February.

Kepler's hopes were probably shattered by this time, and he was probably thinking about how to get back. It was too much of a loss of self-esteem. He had come all the way here to seek refuge, but where was the emperor's enthusiasm? Where was the promised food and clothing? They were like two stray dogs.

However, when he saw the big house and servants prepared for him, and went up to the observatory with the Eastern emperor who could speak Latin, and looked at the starry sky in front of a telescope that was more than two people tall, all the suffering and grievances he had suffered in the previous decades immediately disappeared.

While looking at the moon through the telescope, he wiped the tears from his face. He just turned 56 this month. He had endured 56 years of hardship in Hexi and finally arrived in Hedong.

When the emperor asked him to write a letter to recommend European scholars, the first letter was to Galileo. Although the two had never met, they had corresponded and were both engaged in astronomical exploration. If they could work together, coupled with the equipment and conditions here, the scenery would be picturesque.

Unfortunately, things didn't go as planned. In 1628, Galileo had not yet been subjected to religious trial. Even after receiving Kepler's personal letter, he had no intention of abandoning his family and career to take risks in the far East.

But it cannot be said that it had no effect at all. After six years, the two of them got together again. Every day, apart from staying together in the observatory to write and calculate, they quarreled constantly. After quarreling, they made up, and after a few days, they quarreled again, and then made up again. As a result, the students in the Royal Academy always believed that the two of them had a grudge against each other.

"Your Majesty, Your Majesty, you are finally back! I can say responsibly that your ministers are all fools. They are unwilling to send a ship to pick up Kepler's friends and me. This is what you promised before, allowing us to hire European scholars to teach in the academy!"

Before anyone came in, a deep baritone resounded in the Yangxin Palace. Galileo, wearing the robes of a sixth-rank official but with his long hair loose, strode in, shaking two memorials in his hands, and in a bad mood.

It can be said that this old man is also a fan of officials. When he heard that this was the work uniform of imperial officials and that their rank was similar to that of the mayor, he believed that they had to be dressed neatly whenever he attended classes or met guests. He also often used his position to put pressure on Kepler to get him to agree with his views.

"Oh, have you received a reply? Who's coming?"

But Hong Tao didn't find it annoying, and he didn't accept the censors' impeachment. As long as they didn't leave the Imperial Academy, let alone wear official uniforms, they could even try on the emperor's robes. Let them live comfortably here, and the rewards would be immeasurable. If you don't sacrifice your children, you won't catch the wolf. Now the wolf is here!

"Vincenzo Casciarolo, from Bologna. Although he is only an alchemist, he discovered the Bologna stone and should meet the conditions you gave." Seeing the emperor's smiling face, Galileo felt much better. He opened the memorial and began to read the names. There was a brief introduction behind each name. These people were European scholars he had found from memory or through friends, and they all had positive responses and were willing to come to the East for academic visits. Due to the shipping schedule and distance issues, it would take half a year for a letter to go back and forth. If it took too long, there might be changes.

But as luck would have it, when the ship carrying the reply letter arrived, the emperor had been on a tour and had been gone for several months. None of the other Ming officials could make the decision, so they became a little anxious.

"Bologna Stone...Alchemist, well, count me as one!"

Hong Tao knew what Bologna stone was. Its official name was barite. It had a high specific gravity and could continue to fluoresce when exposed to sunlight. In later times, it was used in large quantities for oil extraction, and was also made into a night-shining pearl by some people to deceive people.

But are alchemists worth being hired as scholars for a large sum of money? Looking at Comrade Galileo's serious expression, he said, "Just pass it. This little money is not a big deal." It cannot be said that alchemists are all rubbish. They are only one step away from chemists. In fact, the discipline of chemistry was invented by European alchemists.

"Johann Rudolf Glauber, Bavarian, alchemist and pharmacist. He discovered Glauber's salt ten years ago, and an acid similar to sulfuric and nitric acids, which is made from common salt."

"Salt... could it be hydrochloric acid? Well, that counts as one too!" Hearing that there was another alchemist, Hong Tao began to frown.

No one knows what Glauber's salt is. Europeans are used to naming it after its discoverer. But it is indeed possible to extract strong acid from table salt, and the result is hydrochloric acid. If this is true, then it is not a charlatan. It must be a chemical genius. It is worth a try.

"Bonaventura Francesco Cavalieri, born in Milan, is a professor of mathematics at the University of Bologna. He is a very talented young man. The letter said that he had just published "Indivisible Geometry" this year. The two of us have had a profound discussion on this topic."

After talking about two alchemists in a row, Galileo himself felt that their level was a bit low. The next one was more orthodox, a pure scholar, and his fellow Italian countryman, so he looked quite familiar.

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"Well, no problem. If he is willing to stay in the Royal Academy to teach, I can provide him with generous compensation and living standards!" This time Hong Tao did not frown. The name sounded familiar, and he was number one in calculus. There was no need for an interview. He would offer good treatment first and try to get him!

"The following few people belong to the same private society and have devout clergy. Will Your Majesty allow them to enter the imperial capital?"

Seeing the emperor's face turn from gloomy to cheerful, Galileo felt a little uneasy. After all, he had been in this overly large and prosperous capital for more than a year and had met Jesuit missionaries. He must have known something about the Ming Empire emperor's control over religion.

(End of this chapter)