The smooth progress of the past two days seemed to have been some kind of ominous sign; bad news came one after another.
Cohen, who had used his connection with Gaudin, the scriptwriter, to find Georgiana, brought news of Ouvrard. The reason he had so easily bought two million quintals of wheat from Spain this time was that he had made a secret agreement with Godoy, Spain's prime minister.
Napoleoni wanted coinage to flow into France. Spain currently used piastre silver coins, and Ouvrard had contracted with the Spanish king for the transport of all coinage passing through Spanish America. Ouvrard had a close friend in London named Labouchère, who was Pete's close friend and Baring's son-in-law.
Britain sent the money for purchasing Spanish piastre silver coins to Labouchère, then dispatched four cruisers to carry Spain's silver coins to the East Indies, where silver was needed for trade. Not only did Ouvrard provide no ships, he pocketed all the shipping fees paid by Spain. In return, Napoleon was to reduce Spain's indemnity payment for the following year.
Besides the Mortgage Bank operated by Gaudin, the Bank of France also had the "Current Deposit Bank" and the "Commercial Discount Bank." The Current Deposit Bank possessed funds prepared for assisting the Treasury, while the Commercial Discount Bank handled bill discounting.
The shareholders of the Current Deposit Bank expanded their businesses through the privileges they had acquired from the national bank, but that bank did not possess a monopoly on issuing currency. Mollien of the Mortgage Bank was responsible for issuing government bonds, and he stabilized the Treasury's standing by publicly announcing bond prices.
The same thing could be carried out smoothly under China's centralized system, yet it encountered every sort of difficulty in the Western world. The bankers could sit in magnificent