Georgiana finally understood why Napoleoni disliked sitting in on lectures at the Political Academy of the French Academy.
So many scholars had argued for half the day, yet they saw less clearly than a slave with no formal education. It was like fresh water and salt water: both were water, but because salt water was denser, fresh water floated on top. The baseline and standard for "equality" were not the same at all. The slave owners of Saint-Domingue would never want equality with the "lowborn" living in the slums of Paris. When a group could barely survive, when life itself was sufficiently cheap, speaking of "dignity" became a luxury. These people wore filthy, tattered clothes and lived in dreadful conditions. Desperate to escape this place, when they saw wealthy people passing by, what showed in their eyes was not envy but greed. If Fiegel had not been carrying a sword, Georgiana suspected they would already have tried to rob her.
Fantine in Les Misérables had ultimately fallen into such a place. Narrow, dark alleys, muddy roads, excrement that might fall from above at any moment—those few dressed even slightly better looked like criminals. They were standing outside a door, demanding repayment from the people inside, while cries and sobs filled the house.
Sometimes people borrowed from loan sharks because they had no other choice, and the same was true for nations. England could issue government bonds at 3 percent interest, and sell more of them than bonds of France at 5 percent, because Britain had never failed to repay its debts. A high credit rating naturally made borrowing easier.
The Bank of France had a "debt repayment" treasury from which those who had bought France's government bonds could receive compensation. Those who had bought property in Saint-Domingue, however, could only