A Gentle Prayer Hymn

China once issued a silver coin called the "Yuan Big Head." Blow on it, and it produced a pleasant sound—the "song of money," as Jewish merchants called it.

The word "yuan," pronounced differently, could mean "currency" or "wronged." "Sucker" seemed, like "witch," to be far from a complimentary term.

The Fourth Crusade was a textbook case of unscrupulous merchants fooling suckers, using them as weapons to sack Constantinople.

Four bronze horses stood on the outer wall of St. Mark's Basilica. They were spoils taken from Constantinople.

At the highest point in the center of the Brandenburg Gate stood a bronze statue of the goddess of victory—Nike in Greek mythology, Victoria in Roman mythology.

The goddess spread the wings behind her and drove a four-horse, two-wheeled chariot toward eastern Berlin. In her right hand, she held a scepter bearing an oak wreath, within which rested an Iron Cross. An eagle with spread wings stood atop the wreath, wearing the crown of Prussia.

The Louvre also had a statue of the goddess of victory, though it was made of stone. It remained one of the Louvre's greatest treasures.

Besides the Mona Lisa, both the goddess of victory and the Venus de Milo were incomplete. Yet their damage differed from that of the Six Steeds of Zhaoling. Lu Qizhai had played the sucker once for the sake of a Yuan Big Head, just as Russia had sold Alaska. Now that he wanted to buy it back, America would never sell.

Whenever Constantinople's envoys saw the bronze horses on St. Mark's Basilica in the "drawing room of Europe," they must have been furious.

It was not just Venice, but other Italian cities that had been plundered as well. How many treasures in the Louvre belonged to Italy? Whenever Italy saw other European Union member