Georgiana still remembered how frenzied the financial world's reaction had been when agricultural loans were first proposed. It was not just bankers from France; foreign banks had come as well, including a Jewish financier from Frankfurt, introduced through Gaudin. Unfortunately, the negotiations had ultimately fallen through, and even the agricultural loan scheme had never been put into effect.
For a bank to conduct lending business, collateral was essential. Land was generally considered the most valuable form of collateral. France had once issued Assignats; since the treasury had lacked sufficient gold and silver to guarantee them at the time, land had served as the guarantee instead.
The "court Jews" had little interest in Belgian land, but they were intensely interested in land in France, especially the area around Chantilly, once a place where the royal family of France hunted and held horse races. After the French Revolution, some of the land was put up for sale, and the Rothschild family seized the opportunity to buy a large tract there.
The house Gaudin and Sophie owned in the Bois de Boulogne was registered in their names, but according to Sophie's correspondence with Matilda, not a single Franc of the 200,000-Franc dowry Georgiana had given Sophie had been used. Bonaparte had paid for the house. In the old days, if "Madame de Maintenon" had given a maid only 200,000 Francs as a dowry, she would have been considered stingy.
Matilda's family was much like the Bonaparte family had been when they first left Corsica: noble in title alone. Georgiana's salary was too meager to support the whole household, so Matilda had borrowed a sum from Sophie, drawn from those 200,000 Francs. Gaudin's expenses in Madrid were not small, but he had not touched Sophie's "dowry," leaving her to manage it herself. This time,