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.”
“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.”
Cæsar 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. Cæsar tried to convince them that this was absurd, but nobody
paid any attention to him.