Georgiana had once imagined building a rail line to Spain and Portugal, but she had forgotten one problem.
The bridge from the Jardin des Plantes to the Bastille had been built spontaneously by the people. They had been immensely enthusiastic when tearing down the Bastille, and they had spared no expense when using those stones to build a bridge for people to tread upon.
Leoncourt served as a high official of the Seine Department. Whatever Bonaparte told him to build, he built. Besides Rue de Rivoli, the projects under way included Rue de Castiglione, the Court of Auditors, and the Wine Market.
The Wine Market had suffered both fire and flooding in 1802. Besides trading wine, it also served as a strategic grain reserve. She had Leoncourt halt the renovation project for Rue de Castiglione before it began, bag up all the sand from Place de Grève, and use it to make flood-control sandbags.
There were many residents on that street, and relocating them would certainly cost a great deal. The flood of 1801 had nearly inundated the Élysée Palace. If they had lived at the Tuileries then, they would have been flooded as well. They had noticed nothing only because they had been living in the greenhouse at the Grand Trianon.
Building a breakwater would certainly be safe, but it would ruin the scenery of the island. Then the tourists would stop coming, so how could the tourism industry develop?
The best solution was to expand the coral reefs and let them serve as breakwaters. Yet human activity affected coral formation. It took tens of millions of years for coral reefs to form, but only a hundred years to destroy them.
These temporary floodwalls made of sandbags suited people's aesthetic tastes. Once the flood passed, they could be dismantled