'Never mind. I am drawing closer to answering the question of when. But that was not my whole reason. Really it was that something was happening. Huygens – a brilliant youth, of a great family in the Hague – was at work on a pendulum-clock there that was astonishing. Of course, pendulums were an old idea – but he did something simple and beautiful that fixed them so that they would actually tell time! I saw a prototype, ticking away there in that magnificent house, where the afternoon light streamed in off the Plein – that's a sort of square hard by the palace of the Dutch Court. Then down to Paris, where Comstock and Anglesey were toiling away on – you're correct – stupid nonsense. They truly wanted to learn. But they wanted the brilliance of a Huygens, the audacity to invent a whole new discipline. Alchemy was the only way they knew of.'