Chapter 20: X

X The Verdict In the days of the Doges there was a Gold Book in which the First Families of Venice shone. In New York there is also a Gold Book, unprinted but otherwise familiar. The names that appear there have earned the cataloguing not from medieval prowess, but from money’s more modish might. At the Metropolitan Opera House, two years and a fraction after the trial, the Gold Bookers were on view—men who could have married the Adriatic, dowered her too, whose signatures were potent…