The Minister answered with a letter in a Conservative paper, in which he denied everything Cæsar alleged, and said, with contempt, that questions of Finance were not to be treated by “amateurs.”
Cæsar said that he considered himself insulted by the Minister’s words, whom, however, he admired as a financier; and a few months later he joined the Liberal party and was received with open arms by its famous chief.
XII. LOCAL STRUGGLES THE WATER SUPPLY
Cæsar had money in abundance, and he decided to exert a decisive influence on Castro Duro.
For a long while he had had various projects planned.
He thought it was an appropriate moment to put them into practice.
The first that he tried to carry out was the water supply.
The Municipality had a plan for this in the archives, and Cæsar asked for it to study. The scheme was big and expensive; the stream it was necessary to harness so as to bring it to Castro, was far away. Besides it was requisite to construct a piping system or an aqueduct.
Cæsar consulted an engineer, who told him:
“From a business point of view, this is very poor. Even if you use the superfluous water, in a factory for instance, it will give you no results.”