In his former life, two of the world's three largest water utility conglomerates hailed from France—Suez and Veolia—a testament to how seriously the French took the management of urban water infrastructure. Founded in 1777, the Paris Waterworks Company had spent the last thirteen years supplying clean water to this grand and ancient city.
By the late eighteenth century, as medical science gradually emerged from the long night of medieval superstition, the physicians of Paris came to swear by three remedies for disease: bloodletting, laudanum, and clean drinking water. The first was nonsense; the second remains debatable. But the third—access to clean water—marked a true turning point in urban health.
The Paris Waterworks Company primarily served the city's western districts—neighbourhoods newly colonized by a rising mercantile bourgeoisie: the Champs-Élysées, the Rue Royale quarter, and the area surrounding Place Vendôme. Physicians soon noticed something peculiar: the incidence of cholera in these quarters was dramatically lower than in other parts of the city.
Yet when the company attempted to extend this clean-water model to the remaining forty-five districts of Paris, it encountered fierce and unexpected resistance. The city's numerous springwell owners—known collectively as les fontainiers—along with their allies, the porters and water-haulers whose livelihoods depended on the old order, banded together and swore to sabotage the planned expansion of piped water infrastructure. Their opposition was not merely commercial but political; certain factions within the municipal government also began to exert pressure on the Périer brothers, founders of the company.
In fact, the financial storm that would soon engulf the Périer brothers came even earlier than Ouvrard had predicted.
On the afternoon of May 28, panic spread across the Paris Bourse. Investors dumped the Waterworks Company's two-year bonds en masse. Instruments with a face value of ten livres fell to barely half that by market close. Unless City Hall made an official statement before the following Monday—disavowing the rumour that it intended to revoke the company's water distribution charter and cancel annual subsidies for public canal construction—the bonds risked becoming worthless within days.
In later centuries, the Bois de Boulogne on the right bank of the Seine—together with the Bois de Vincennes on the city's southeastern flank—would be hailed as the twin lungs of Paris. Since the days of the Sun King, Louis XIV, the Boulogne woods had been a favoured haunt of the nobility, filled with the sounds of clipped hooves, powdered laughter, and scandalous rendezvous beneath rustling boughs. It was where sleek stallions galloped, powdered wigs gleamed, and the fragrant echoes of high society perfumed the air.
On May 29, the skies were clear and the air mild—perfect weather for an outing.
André, accompanied by Hoche, departed by carriage for the Bois de Boulogne. Before leaving, he found Fourier once again buried in a book and extended an invitation. The reclusive mathematician initially declined, reluctant to abandon his reading, but changed his mind when André promised he would witness firsthand the awe-inspiring might of steam-powered machinery.
Even in the jostling carriage, Fourier continued reading with single-minded focus. It was not a novel but a scientific journal. As part of his role as tutor, Fourier had received a letter of introduction from André granting him access to the library of the Academy of Sciences—for a modest five-livre annual fee, he could borrow any number of periodicals and monographs. Such privileges were unheard of back in his provincial hometown. Madame Anna, the housekeeper, often complained that the hearty soups she prepared for the young scholar remained untouched, as Fourier preferred to spend long days in the library with nothing but dry bread in his coat pocket.
In 1790, no bridge yet connected the Left Bank directly to the Bois de Boulogne. The carriage had to detour via the Pont Neuf on the Île de la Cité, crossing the Seine before crawling westward through the congested riverside boulevards lined with coach houses and carriage vendors. The route crossed at least six districts and took no less than ninety minutes.
André had just finished admiring the manicured splendour of the Tuileries gardens when he grew bored and cast a glance toward Fourier's reading material. The headline leapt out: A Preliminary Inquiry into Descriptive Geometry, authored by none other than Monge. Any temptation to flaunt his knowledge of futuristic technologies in front of the future mathematician instantly evaporated. André quietly shelved the idea and turned his attention to Hoche instead.
"How is the mounted patrol squad progressing?" he asked.
Aside from a single visit to the garrison in the Jardin des Plantes on recruitment day, André had largely left the cavalry company to run itself. Hoche, when not attending classes at the École Militaire on alternate days, had remained at camp overseeing matters firsthand.
"Smoothly," Hoche replied, lowering the training manual in his lap—an adaptation of the Regulations of the Suzdal Regiment, revised by Augereau to suit the needs of urban mounted policing. He described the logistical situation as complete: horses, rations, arms, uniforms—all had been supplied.
As for Augereau's performance, Hoche used the word excellent.
Wherever he went, Augereau cut a distinctive figure. His uniform was always immaculate; he wore his curled hair powdered white and tied in a long queue, his boots shone like polished mirrors. Amid the raw-boned recruits—most of them country herdsmen unaccustomed to formality—his appearance might have seemed ludicrous. But no such ridicule followed him.
Quite the opposite.
To the new recruits, Augereau was a figure of awe. They admired his coarse, booming voice, his muscular frame, and above all, his swordsmanship—graceful, brutal, and efficient. In their eyes, he was a Prussian giant drilling them into the shape of Frederick the Great's royal guard. He shouted discipline into them, forged pride out of sweat and bruises. Even Police Commissioner Legoff, during a recent inspection, had praised the former sergeant's performance and hinted at the possibility of promotion.
"If there's one flaw," Hoche added after a moment's pause, casting a glance toward André, "it's that Augereau has a habit of boasting after drills. Loudly. In front of the men."
It was not slander—it was protection.
As André's most trusted confidant, Hoche knew his commander did not entirely trust Augereau. There was always a layer of suspicion, a cautious line André would not allow the other to cross. He saw Augereau as a tool—a recruiter, a sword instructor. Nothing more.
Augereau, for his part, disliked André just as much—perhaps even feared him. At a drunken gathering outside camp, he had once blurted to Hoche, "That little bastard from Reims scares me." Hoche, ever discreet, had warned his companions not to repeat the remark. He never let it reach André's ears.
André smiled and said no more. He was content with Hoche's diplomacy. Where Augereau and Javert had required coercion and pressure to bend to his will, Hoche had been won over with patience, warmth, and trust. In Hoche's eyes, André believed he appeared not as a ruthless schemer, but as a protector—an elder brother of sorts. Fourier, too, seemed to occupy a similar space under his roof: brilliant, quiet, unworldly, and already under his wing.
As a thick canopy of green rose ahead, the Bois de Boulogne came into view. But the carriage did not proceed into the heart of that storied grove—the city's infamous haven for clandestine liaisons. Instead, it followed a gravel path tracing the outer edge of the forest along the Seine.
After another twenty minutes, the carriage pulled up before the gates of the Paris Waterworks Company, nestled on the riverbank.
Even before dismounting, the group was drawn toward the deafening roar that filled the air. Looking up, they saw it: a colossal contraption, easily three storeys high and nearly ten metres tall, anchored to the bank like a mechanical fortress. It was a Watt steam engine—or more precisely, the Périer brothers' reverse-engineered replica. The Watt firm had filed numerous complaints to the French patent office since 1777, accusing the Périers of flagrant infringement. A compromise had finally been reached in 1783: after paying a licensing fee, the brothers received official permission to produce the engine in France.
Driven by boiler steam, the massive waterwheel—fitted with three blades and two dozen half-cylinder tanks—turned with ponderous force. The mechanism groaned and splashed, lifting hundreds of gallons of river water into a man-made canal. The canal led toward three artificial lakes within the Bois de Boulogne, each functioning as a reservoir.
Over the course of twenty-four to forty-eight hours, the water would undergo natural sedimentation, aided by the addition of powdered alum to accelerate purification. Once reasonably clean, the lake water was lifted by a second, smaller steam engine—a rotary pump—into a thirty-yard-high water tower. From there, a network of Roman-style aqueducts would carry the purified water into the western districts of Paris.
From the duplication of the Watt engine, to the construction of these waterwheels, reservoirs, and channels—the scale of investment was immense. Between engineers' salaries, maintenance costs, and imported components, the project relied heavily on annual subsidies from the municipal treasury. Without them, the meagre fees collected from water usage would not have sustained operations for a year.
After the initial awe of the roaring machinery wore off, André lost interest. His gaze shifted westward toward the warehouse and administration buildings. Hoche had already gone ahead to announce their visit.
But Fourier, having set down his book, was visibly exhilarated. Ignoring the workers' warnings, he darted beneath the engine's base, craning his neck to study every piston and valve. Only when the boiler vented a stream of sooty exhaust did the future scientist retreat, coughing and blackened.
"Cough, cough—" Still wiping ash from his face, Fourier came bounding over to André. "This machine is at least a decade old. The engineers added a sun-and-planet crank system later on, but it lacks a parallel linkage, so it can't maintain bidirectional piston movement. If they used the new British steam indicator, the engine could improve its thermal efficiency by 150, maybe 200 percent!"
Parallel linkage, double-acting cylinders, steam indicators—an avalanche of technical jargon poured out, leaving André utterly bewildered. He had originally intended to impress Fourier with his "superior" futuristic knowledge of machinery. Now he abandoned that idea altogether.
Applause rang out behind André, followed by the crisp echo of approaching boots and the mellow voice of a middle-aged scholar. "Magnificent! Are you also studying steam engines, young man?"
Fourier, flushed and bashful, replied, "Only by chance—I've read a few English engineering journals."
Hoche appeared beside them, introducing André to another middle-aged man dressed like a merchant. Earlier, Hoche had explained part of their intent to the Périer brothers: they came as prospective investors hoping to survey the Paris Waterworks Company.
The scholar was Charles Périer, the elder of the two brothers and the firm's chief engineer. His younger brother, Louis Périer, managed the commercial side. Both were short, plainly dressed, and afflicted with matching patterns of early baldness, though their temperaments could not have been more different.
Charles Périer showed no interest in commercial matters. He immediately took Fourier by the arm, insisting on giving him a personal tour of the engine works—without so much as a formal greeting to André.
Louis Périer offered a flustered apology. André simply waved it away with a smile and accepted the invitation to sit and rest in the reception room.
The offices and reception chamber occupied part of the warehouse. The space was vast—about the size of a modern indoor basketball court—but sparse and weary. Rusted parts and worn tools lay scattered across the floor. A few weary labourers moved about, listless and few in number. With the company's finances in crisis, half the workforce had already been sent home.
The reception room was no better. The walls bore only two portraits of the Périer brothers and a single landscape oil painting of the company's founding. A few cracked leather sofas lined the edges, their corners frayed to the stuffing. The centre table, cluttered with brochures and ledgers, held documents yellowed with age. André glanced through them; the claims were, at least, not exaggerated.
He accepted a glass of red wine from his host and took a sip—mediocre quality. He made a mental note: the Périers were struggling. Their expansion projects were stalled, their bonds collapsing on the market. Even their wine had gone cheap.
"Thank you for visiting our company, Monsieur Franck," Louis Périer said with little ceremony. "May I ask how much you're prepared to invest?"
André did not answer the question. Instead, he replied with a question of his own.
"From what I understand, your company's problems are not merely financial. There are certain regulatory threats. If left unaddressed, by next Monday your two-year bonds will be worthless. The securities oversight board is convening an emergency session that evening. They may delist your company entirely from the exchange."
He paused, watching Louis Périer's brow furrow in silence. The man was furious, but listening. That was enough.
André knew his name did not yet carry the thunderclap of Mirabeau, Lafayette, or Bailly. But the title he bore—Prosecutor of the Revenue—would not be ignored by any man in charge of a public utility. If Louis Périer had not already been briefed on his visitor's second identity, his company might already be defunct.
"So then," André continued calmly, "before we discuss investments, two matters must be addressed. First, I can assist your company in renegotiating with the Hôtel de Ville, extending your current municipal contract. Second, I will work to neutralize opposition from the spring-well syndicates, ensuring that your clean-water expansion project reaches the city centre."
He paused.
"And third—"
"I will not hand over control of this company!" Louis Périer exploded, cutting him off mid-sentence. The manager's voice shook with outrage. Clearly, he believed the young tax prosecutor was attempting a hostile takeover, not a mutually beneficial partnership.
"Oh, I think you misunderstand me." André replied with unruffled grace. His tone was steady, his manner unconcerned.
Truthfully, he had little interest in owning a majority stake in the Paris Waterworks Company. To him, it was a clunky relic: outdated Watt engines, pre-modern waterwheel systems, and a distribution model barely more advanced than those of ancient Rome. In the eyes of a man from the future, it was all so... quaint.
In 1788, Watt & Boulton in England alone had produced over 200 modern steam engines per year. In contrast, the Périer brothers had built a grand total of 63 in thirteen years—most of which ended up in rural coal mines or on canal pumps in the south. Even by 1790, while the British had already devised a fifth-generation steam engine for steamships (though blocked by sailboat lobbies), France's premier manufacturer still struggled to reproduce even the second generation with reliable performance.
Given the warming of Anglo-French relations, André could—with enough gold—easily import a superior engine directly from Britain. No patent barriers. No production quotas.
"I'm not interested in running your company," André clarified. "What I want is your engineers—and your craftsmen."
He laid out his real vision: by next year, his agents would procure the newest British-built Watt engine, intended for installation on a merchant vessel. He planned to hire British engineers, yes—but he also needed a team of experienced French workers to support the project. Engineers who had already built engines. Machinists who understood iron and pressure and moving parts.
Louis Périer finally exhaled. So long as André didn't plan to seize their core business—the waterworks—the rest was negotiable. As for steam-powered ships, that idea had circulated in Britain and America for decades. Many entrepreneurs had invested in it; no one had yet succeeded in making a vessel that sailed rivers under its own power.
In truth, Louis had long considered shuttering the company's steamworks division. It yielded no profit and drained valuable resources. He had even proposed turning it into a repair workshop instead. But his elder brother Charles, an idealist and purist, refused.
Now, however, if the investor only wanted to spin off a separate company for marine engineering—one with its own direction, funding, and management—Louis was open to the idea.
With the air finally cleared, the two parties reached a provisional agreement:
If André could steer the Paris Waterworks Company out of its immediate crisis—restore investor confidence, ease municipal tensions, and open a pathway into the central districts—then the Périer brothers would, before year's end, formally spin off their steam engine division into a separate entity. In this new firm, the brothers would retain a 30% technical stake. The remaining 70% of equity would belong to André Franck.
Charles Périer, the elder brother and chief engineer, would serve as technical director and a sitting board member. A contingent of engineers and over one hundred trained machinists would transfer with him. As for the future manager of the new enterprise, André had already identified several candidates. He had not yet made a final decision.
Charles, when informed of the deal, gave his assent with only one condition: he wanted to travel to Britain in person, to inspect the most recent marine-grade steam engines.
"Watt's machines are reliable," he conceded, "but their pressure levels are too low, their thermal conversion inefficient. If we want to put steam engines on ships, we'll need to adopt—and improve upon—the British high-pressure design."
He cited the views of his newly befriended protégé, the young Joseph Fourier, and insisted the boy accompany him on the expedition.
This was no issue for André. He nodded at Hoche, who quickly made an excuse to escort both Charles and Fourier out of the meeting room, leaving André and Louis Périer alone for their private negotiation.
Once alone, André laid out his true intent.
He informed Louis Périer that the Paris Hôtel de Ville would remain silent for the next two weeks. It would neither confirm nor deny its future subsidies. Nor would it move to revoke the waterworks company's concession early.
In the meantime, André intended to use the bond panic to stage a deliberate financial operation—with the Périer brothers as covert allies.
"I've already prepared," André said. "Tomorrow morning, my broker will begin buying up your two-year bonds across the Paris market. At the same time, I will personally lobby the Securities Oversight Committee to delay their emergency vote by at least a week. By then, with the crisis defused, the committee itself will be irrelevant."
He reached into his satchel and produced a dossier, sliding it across the table.
"This," André declared, "is the key to saving your company."
One week earlier, he had sent Fourier to the Academy's archives to compile a detailed chart of the five major cholera outbreaks in Paris between 1780 and 1789. From this data, André created a map of the city, marking a horizontal line for every household with a reported fatality. When cross-referenced with other statistics, a chilling pattern emerged: the highest concentrations of death occurred around natural wells and springheads.
The culprit was clear. The well water of Paris was a conduit for disease.
"But," André continued, "when paired with the nearly cholera-free records of the western districts—supplied by your company's clean water—the contrast becomes irrefutable. Publish this side-by-side analysis in the leading Paris newspapers. No one will dare oppose the construction of your aqueducts."
The idea was borrowed—unapologetically—from history.
In truth, Fourier had compiled the data. But the method André employed was inspired by the greatest epidemiologist of a future age: John Snow. In 1854, during London's cholera outbreak, Snow had disproven the prevailing theory of "miasma" by proving that contaminated well water was the vector of infection. His map of deaths around Broad Street's public pump became legend. It changed public health forever.
André now planned to use the same strategy—decades early—to strike a death blow to the Parisian well syndicates.
Of course, he omitted certain facts. The real way to prevent cholera wasn't aqueducts, but hygiene: boiled water, clean hands, laundered linens. But that knowledge could wait. Later. First, he needed to win the political battle. Only after that would he bring out the microscope—preferably a Leuwenhoek, smuggled in from England.