Of course, the cost of a mile of urban rail track was nowhere near several hundred thousand francs. That figure had been exaggerated through rumor by the people of Bern.
Moreover, the construction costs had basically come out of Bern's three-million "membership fee."
The French Treasury Department had only allocated a little over two hundred thousand francs to Upper Germania Province in total—most of it had been spent repairing and developing those "roman-era ruins," as well as upgrading the supporting roads.
Freno continued enviously, "I heard that gas streetlights will be installed here next year or the year after. From then on, this city will no longer have cold nights.
"Maybe there'll even be tap water or something. Who knows? French cities have all these miraculous things anyway."
That was even more of his wild guesswork.
Bern had a population of fewer than thirty thousand people, nowhere near enough to support the operating costs of such luxurious facilities as gas streetlights. In fact, even in France, only seven or eight major cities such as Paris, Lyon, and Bordeaux had gas streetlights, while only Paris and Lyon had tap water.
The closer the Basel representative's carriage drew to the Governor's Residence of Upper Germania, the slower it moved.
Watching the crowded pedestrians, passing carriages, and vendors everywhere along the streets, Gosselin could not help asking, "Is there some festival today?"
Although Bern had slightly more people than Basel, it also covered a larger area. In his experience, the streets could not possibly be this crowded on an ordinary day.
Only after his attendant asked a street vendor did he learn that, over the past few months, people from cities across northern Switzerland had been flooding madly into Bern. Even the outskirts were now packed with people. Many of them were from