The Path Between the Seas

by David McCullough

The situation was this. Years before, at Panama, when he resigned his position with the canal company and went to work as a private contractor at Culebra, he had been able to take only a government salary because of a rule requiring all French government engineers to remain in service, accepting no pay or fees from private sources, for a minimum of five years. However, he had seen to it that his brother, Maurice, was put into the Paris office of the contracting firm as its financial manager, and he and his brother had made a secret agreement. A salary would simply be put aside for him until the required five years were up. It was a maneuver that evoked no little disdain when revealed later, but Bunau-Varilla maintained that the money was rightfully his and, furthermore, that it enabled him to “consecrate” his life to the Panama canal, “to save the noble conception of French genius through its adoption by America.” How much money was involved, how much of it he may have used, if any, has never been determined. It is quite certain, nonetheless, that he did have a direct monetary interest in the fortunes of the new canal company, since he and his brother were what were known as “penalty stockholders.”