nister answered with a letter in a Conservative paper, in which
he denied everything Caesar alleged, and said, with contempt, that
questions of Finance were not to be treated by "amateurs."

Caesar 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

Caesar 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 Caesar 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.

Caesar 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."

"What shall we do then?"

"The simplest thing would be to put in a pumping plant and pump up the
river water."

"But it is infected water, full of impurities."

"It can be purified by filtering. That's not difficult."

Caesar laid this plan before the Municipality, and it was decided to
carry it out, as the most practical and practicable. A company was
formed to pump up the water, and work was begun.

The stockholders were almost all rich people of Castro, and the company
drew up its constitution in such a manner that the town got scarcely any
benefit out of it. They were not going to instal more than two public
fountains inside the city limits, and those were to run only a few
hours. Caesar tried to convince them that this was absurd, but nobody
paid any attention to him.

THE LIBRARY

A bit disappointed, he left the "Water Pumping Company" to go its way,
and devoted himself entirely to things that he could carry out alone.

The first one he tried was establishing a circulating library of
technical books on trades and agriculture, and of polite and scientific
literature, in the Workmen's Club.

"They will sell the books," everybody said; "they will get them all
soiled, and tear out the leaves...."

Caesar had th