"I think I know what Torlonia is after." At the lively banquet in Duke's Courtyard, Polina asked Georgiana, "Which bank is your big diamond in now?"
There were always all sorts of rumors circulating at social gatherings. Though Georgiana had told the young people to stay in their rooms after nine, they had still come out to mingle.
Before Giovanni Torlonia became "the Pope's accountant," the Holy See's Finance Council had hired another economist, one who had served Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II. His strategy had been to develop the textile industry.
He had not solved the Papal States' treasury troubles, but the important thing was that this was how Torlonia obtained the Pope's alum mines, and why those mines had not been auctioned off as Church property. Yet the new company could not operate either, thanks to endless theft, attacks by armed groups, and flooding caused by heavy rains that made the quarry unusable.
In 1796, King Vittorio Amedeo III of Sardinia died, and Charles Emmanuel IV ascended the throne. He mortgaged three large diamonds to Torlonia, allowing the Sardinian king to live in Rome after his abdication.
Giovanni had been a favorite of Pius VI, but Pius VII had been chosen in Vienna. Germany had alum mines of its own, and leather goods no longer depended on alum as they once had, having shifted to chrome-tanned leather.
If Alessandro made Georgiana happy, perhaps she really would place that "Mughal Diamond" in his family's vault.
Without gold, diamonds could indeed serve as a kind of "hard currency."
Leonardo da Vinci's notes said: The way to reinforce an arch's stability is to begin using fine stone at the springing point and continue all the way to the crown.
No matter how splendid a building's exterior was, it could not stand